Aurora In The Arctic ~ Help NEEDED!!!

[trout bum]

also posted in Help section...

The Aurora were out something fierce last night, more breathtakingly than I've ever seen them. I need some help though! They're going to be out again tonight and I need to get rid of the noise, or minimize it at least. If possible. That being said, I need the advice of people who know more than I do and this forum has always provided that kind of input.

Shooting settings were as follows... f/14, 58.8 seconds exposure time, iso 1250, +3 exposure bias, show with a Nikon D300s, AF-S Nikkor 16-85 MM 1:3.5-5.6 using tripod and remote cord.

[Greg McCary]

I am no expert but first thing I would try is to lower the iso. Open the aperture. F/14 to around f/5.6. 800 iso or even lower. The lower you can get the iso the less noise there is going to be.

[Greg McCary]

Check this out........
http://www.alaskaphotographics.com/h...n_lights.shtml

[armando_m]

WOW I'm envious of you, looking forward to your photos!!

First thing I noticed is that you used F14, that is a waste of the ability of your lens to capture light

The checklist from the article that Greg posted is excellent

I have shot the stars using ISO3200 with my D300 and I got decent photos, i think the aurora lights is much brighter as you could f14 and ISO 1250, remember to have the noise reduction on for high ISO and long exposures, check the histograms and you'll get fine images !

Maybe recompose so the bright light at the lower right corner is not in the frame

If you don't know what the histogram should look like try downloading an image from the article and check it out. compare with the histogram from your image, yours has values shifted all the way to the left, nothing on the right side, the images from the article have values distributed almost all the way to the right

Your camera will do fine with the ISO you used, as an example here is an image I shot with my D300 at ISO 3200
http://gallery.photographyreview.com...0/DSC_5826.jpg
My histogram is also charged to the left and i do not see the noise as a problem

Once again looking forward to your shots !! :thumbsup:

[LeeIs]

I think most tips were already discussed above.

Armando, nice shot. I hate using that high of an iso. Even really long exposures seem to give me a lot of noise. how much does the noise reduction for long exposure work? I'm not sure if I tried it.... I use a d300 also.

That shot looks nice, but i can't till if all of that are stars or a mix between noise and stars
. lol. let me know.

[trout bum]

Thanks for all the advice! The second night proved much better as I shot at ISO 400 at f4.5 and had some great takes. I did notice when uploading them onto the computer that they were still a bit noisy which shouldn't have been the case. I then learned another valuable lesson: turn off your vr when shootiing on a tripod. I haven't tinkered with the images much as I work 12 hours days and have been sacrificing a fair bit of sleep chasing these magical Lights. I did play with one shot, however, performing a minimal amount of pp; I still have some cloning to do in the upper right corner. Another valuable lesson: check your lens hood before shooting as it may come loose during transport across the tundra. :hand: I am going to purchase a noise reduction program as CS4 isn't doing it for me. Any suggestions would be appreciated as far as pp and noise reduction programs are concerned! Here's that shot, and thanks again for your advice!