Photographing the Northern Lights

We are currently on Aurora's Northern Lights cruise, and I have just been to the photography department's lecture on photographing the lights. I found the lecture very useful, but I wondered if they had an agenda to encourage everybody to book the official excursion. We have not done so, mainly due to the cost, and the prospect of sitting in the middle of a field at night, in the freezing cold, and still not perhaps see them. We were going to stay on board, where I understand the view can be just as good. However, the lecturer stated that, even though the ship is berthed against the quay, there will still be some slight movement, and due to the long exposure required, all pictures will suffer from camera movement, and will be blurry. My question is, has anybody on here successfully taken photos of the lights from on board, and got sharp pictures?

The light pollution on the ship / dock is more likely to be an issue than any movement.

Check the aurora service for the dates you are going to see if there is likely to be any reasonable activity anyway. Just google Aurora forecast (if you have not already done so).

Hope you are lucky. It is amazing to see if hit the right time period.

It was on the news/weatherforcast today 10/Mar that Aurora activity is meant to be good tonight even to the northern scottish isles- Hope you get some good pictures.

took my wife to Iceland to see the Northern Lights. tour in a small boat out in the harbor to get away from city lights. much smaller boat so movement would have been more pronounced. long story short after cold ride no lights to be seen.

punchline is we live up north so have seen the Lights from our backyard. also, lights move (some say dance) so movement of the ship is not the only factor...stop down a bit and increase exposure

We are currently on Aurora's Northern Lights cruise, and I have just been to the photography department's lecture on photographing the lights. I found the lecture very useful, but I wondered if they had an agenda to encourage everybody to book the official excursion. We have not done so, mainly due to the cost, and the prospect of sitting in the middle of a field at night, in the freezing cold, and still not perhaps see them. We were going to stay on board, where I understand the view can be just as good. However, the lecturer stated that, even though the ship is berthed against the quay, there will still be some slight movement, and due to the long exposure required, all pictures will suffer from camera movement, and will be blurry. My question is, has anybody on here successfully taken photos of the lights from on board, and got sharp pictures?[/quote

 

 

Hi....Sorry I can't give you any help at all but I would be interested in seeing the photos that you take from the ship if it is possible for you to manage to take any photos and also if you are able to post on here.

Having done the Northern Lights cruise on Oriana in 2014 I can give opinion that the darker the area you are in the better the display of the lights if they appear. You might be lucky enough to see the lights but light pollution in Alta might mean the display wont be as good. With regards photographing the lights you really need a dslr and have the camera on a tripod because due to long exposure needed you will get camera shake if camera is hand held. Even when on a tripod even though the lights on top deck will be turned off you still get a certain amount of vibration as engines will be constantly running so there is a chance of even on a tripod you still might get a slight vibration causing picture to be blurred.

We are currently on Aurora's Northern Lights cruise, and I have just been to the photography department's lecture on photographing the lights. I found the lecture very useful, but I wondered if they had an agenda to encourage everybody to book the official excursion. We have not done so, mainly due to the cost, and the prospect of sitting in the middle of a field at night, in the freezing cold, and still not perhaps see them. We were going to stay on board, where I understand the view can be just as good. However, the lecturer stated that, even though the ship is berthed against the quay, there will still be some slight movement, and due to the long exposure required, all pictures will suffer from camera movement, and will be blurry. My question is, has anybody on here successfully taken photos of the lights from on board, and got sharp pictures?

Got off Oriana Northern Lights cruise yesterday and took some great pictures of the lights using my smartphone from my balcony. Lots of people who opted for the tour were not so lucky!

We were on the recent Oriana cruise to the Northern Lights and went on the ship's tour. It was indeed expensive but it did what it said on the tin! Some people said that it was much cheaper to take the shuttle to the visitor centre in Alta where they offered a similar tour for about half the price. But there was a lot of toing and froing on the evening of course. The lights from the ship were visible but less clear because of the ambient light from the port: not to mention the moon! I will try to attach a couple of shots: the first from the ship and the second from the tour to show the difference. Just remember that the actual lights don't look much like this because all images appear to be Photoshopped to the max!! Mine are too.

Finally, our trip was marred by the total inability of Oriana to cope with the cold. Our cabin was like a refrigerator with cold radiating through the floor!!

I was also on the 25th February 2018 sailing and took all my pictures of the Northern Lights from Deck 13 of Oriana. Ambient light was a problem but the ship was perfectly stable for exposures of between 20-30 seconds (using a tripod of course). I chose not to pay for P&O's very expensive tours to see the Northern Lights ... assuming they might be visible. I reckoned that if the Lights were strong, we would see them from the ship as we did both nights in Alta. I'm still processing my photos using Adobe Lightroom but have uploaded half a dozen to Flickr (click here) so you can see what's achievable from the ship. Light balance has been adjusted and contrast increased to make the Lights more visible.

Nice shots, jimgri. An f1 lens and the ability to shoot at ISO250 certainly helps! I had to make do with f4 and ISO800.

Nice shots, jimgri. An f1 lens and the ability to shoot at ISO250 certainly helps! I had to make do with f4 and ISO800.

Thanks, Froxfield. Actually, it was f2 rather than f1 as the manual Samyang lens won't "talk" to my Fujifilm camera.

You can of course book independently with the same company that P&O use for the Northern Lights but at 1575 Norwegian Krone it is dearer than doing it with P&O.

I managed to get a few photos on our 25/2 Oriana cruise with my iPhone. Apparently threre is an app that’s really good but I only found out about it once we’d left Alta.

so I am signed up for a local service that is supposed to give me an email when the chance of visible lights is high. Just got home and my wife shows me great photos of the lights posted on the website of local tv outlet. no email...and it was around zero celsius last night so not that cold...

the jinx continues

I posted on here a link to a url to FB from someone posting from a recent cruise, useful info on how to photo northern lights, and a good 40 minute walk to do from Alta, which gave clear light pollution free views.

I posted a url, not a block of text. As did someone else. It even referenced them. Yet each person has had their post deleted. I’ve been told this is because of these rules https://boards.cruisecritic.com/faq.php?s=&do=search&q=facebook&match=all&titlesonly=0.

Yet I used a url which it states is allowed (even though the url was censored and then the whole post was) I didn’t copy any block of text. Bizarre. Hey ho

I try and be helpful!!!

Thank you all for your very useful replies. I now feel more confident of possibly getting some decent results with my Canon DSLR.

Thank you all for your very useful replies. I now feel more confident of possibly getting some decent results with my Canon DSLR.

All you have to remember is wide angle lens, tripod turn everything on your camera to manual and use long exposures and set ISO high. It is all experimental and worth trialling by taking photos locally at night to give experience and if you do see the lights try different exposures, I used mainly 20secs at ISO800 to get good photos and treated myself to a 10mm wide angle lens with a low f stop before we went.

All you have to remember is wide angle lens, tripod turn everything on your camera to manual and use long exposures and set ISO high. It is all experimental and worth trialling by taking photos locally at night to give experience and if you do see the lights try different exposures, I used mainly 20secs at ISO800 to get good photos and treated myself to a 10mm wide angle lens with a low f stop before we went.

Thanks Majortom, having attended the photo department talk, my understanding is much as you have just advised. I intend starting off at around f2.8, 20 secs exposure, and ISO of 800. My only lens is a Sigma 18-250mm, on which I shall manually set the focus at infinity, and will obviously use a tripod. I do not have a cable release, but may use the camera self timer to avoid any camera shake. Don't intend messing with white balance.

I posted on here a link to a url to FB from someone posting from a recent cruise, useful info on how to photo northern lights, and a good 40 minute walk to do from Alta, which gave clear light pollution free views.

 

I posted a url, not a block of text. As did someone else. It even referenced them. Yet each person has had their post deleted. I’ve been told this is because of these rules https://boards.cruisecritic.com/faq.php?s=&do=search&q=facebook&match=all&titlesonly=0.

 

Yet I used a url which it states is allowed (even though the url was censored and then the whole post was) I didn’t copy any block of text. Bizarre. Hey ho

 

I try and be helpful!!!

The additional message I sent you and your reply has now also been deleted. Its been nice being naughty with you

Regards Kathy x

Thanks Majortom, having attended the photo department talk, my understanding is much as you have just advised. I intend starting off at around f2.8, 20 secs exposure, and ISO of 800. My only lens is a Sigma 18-250mm, on which I shall manually set the focus at infinity, and will obviously use a tripod. I do not have a cable release, but may use the camera self timer to avoid any camera shake. Don't intend messing with white balance.

I can only report that on my Canon DSLR, my first attempts were with an f2.8 24mm lens at ISO800 and at ten seconds pictures were radically over-exposed!! I gave up on the f2.8 lens because its field of view was too restricted and the manual focus ring had no calibration. That was the first picture above. I then turned to my regular lens, a 17-85mm lens. Using f4 and ISO 800 exposures over ten seconds were also over exposed. In fact the second picture above was about a six second exposure, if I recall correctly. Like an idiot, I forgot that I could have lowered the ISO for better quality!!! The main message, I think, is trial and error.

I have never photographed the Northern Lights but I would say that same rules as photographing Fireworks would apply. I.e Solid Tripod, Low ISO, reasonably large aperture 5.6 or 8, Manual focus, shutter speed about 4- 8 sec. Can always use a ND filter to help with correct exposure

I have never photographed the Northern Lights but I would say that same rules as photographing Fireworks would apply. I.e Solid Tripod, Low ISO, reasonably large aperture 5.6 or 8, Manual focus, shutter speed about 4- 8 sec. Can always use a ND filter to help with correct exposure

As I said in my post earlier most of my photos I took was at an ISO800 or perhaps higher and an exposure of 20 seconds which is what we were advised by professional photographers at their talk onboard. Think you might find that 4-8 seconds will not be long enough and we were also told to remove any filter used on any lens you used to allow more light into the lens. So I removed my UV filter from my 10mm wide angle lens. Largest aperture is lower number so f1.4 would be better than f8 which is a lot smaller aperture letting less light into the camera.

As I said in my post earlier most of my photos I took was at an ISO800 or perhaps higher and an exposure of 20 seconds which is what we were advised by professional photographers at their talk onboard. Think you might find that 4-8 seconds will not be long enough and we were also told to remove any filter used on any lens you used to allow more light into the lens. So I removed my UV filter from my 10mm wide angle lens. Largest aperture is lower number so f1.4 would be better than f8 which is a lot smaller aperture letting less light into the camera.

Apologies after reading up I can see you are right, although I would have thought that high ISO and large aperture would cause overexposure at 20 secs. My settings were for fireworks which I guess are much brighter and not a very good comparison.

In addition if you are using a tripod and dSLR with anti vibration lenses or compact camera with anti shake turn off any vibration reduction.

A tripod is a solid base, on still surfaces it can induce shake as it ‘hunts’ trying to balance a lens which isn’t moving.

Just come back from Oriana Cruise to Northern Lights.

The excursions to try and see them are very good if a bit expensive. It’s NOT in the middle of a field. It’s very organised, fires, very warm cafes with free hot chocolate and cake as well as toilets. The best bit are the guides helping with getting great pictures of the lights. My husbands pictures are simply stunning.