Best lens for Northern Lights trip

For Northern Lights, you can get away with slower lenses than for night sky/star/startrails/milkyway photography. Often, you can shoot at ISO 800 with an f/2.8 lens! You will be comfortably able to shoot at iso 1600 with f/4, with decent northern lights. The 7-14 is an amazing choice for this type of photography. I own it, and also the Oly 12mm f/2, and use both.

Here's what's possible with the 12mm. More importantly the live time/bulb allowed perfect exposure across all 3 images to produce this stitch. Website has all settings.


Good point made about the dew shield in last post. I have one of these home made & cheap. Details on website sky at night gallery somewhere. Let me know if you need more info or can't find.

NewGirlLiz said:

Thanks for these replies - and thanks for the article, Bill. Some great points in it. I'll add it to all the others I've bookmarked!

I think I agree about the 9-18 over the 7-14. Only thing, though, is that the highest aperture is F4 - which feels a bit inadequate for the dark conditions - hence thinking about the 12 mm fixed lens with the larger aperture.

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The extra aperture is handy for handheld shots but when you have to use bulb on a tripod it really doesn't make that much difference (especially when it is cold out). Try with and without long exposure noise reduction. also remember to take some bulb exposures,with cap on in order to get some hot pixel mapping frames if needed.

I am a happy owner of the 9-18 mainly because it is small and light (why I bought mFT) as well as ability to take filters.

jwinberg1 said:

venice said:

Sorry that I can't help you from personal experience but here is a review article that seems to do a good job of covering the essentials.

http://www.alaskaphotographics.com/blog/how-to-photograph-the-northern-lights-with-a-digital-camera/

Enjoy!!

-Bill

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I have had personal experience, and wish I had read this article beforehand!

Either of those 2 wide angle lenses should do fine. TAKE OFF ANY FILTERS, they generate circular interference rings on those long exposures at the aurora wavelengths. Turn ON long exposure noise reduction. Shoot RAW at a high ISO, 1600 - 3200 should do fine. LOCK everything down firmly on a sturdy tripod. Try the "bulb live view developing", should work fine on the EM-1.

Good luck, and enjoy........... Jack Winberg

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Isn't it really hard to get good pics of the Northern Lights? The Northern Lights the same as the Aurora Borealis?

And, is it possible to shoot this phenomena from the Southern Hemisphere? Is there a Southern Lights?

Thanks.

To the gentleman who went to Norway to photograph the Northern lights in 2013 with his Olympus OMD-E1:

How did it work out> I plan to go tot Iceland to photograph the northern lights with my Olympus E-1 and am interest in what ISO setting you got the best photographs. Any advice you can give me will be greatly appreciated.

Ladyphotographer

You could try a search on Flickr then look at the EXIF data. Generally, wide lens (<= 24mm and several seconds) that's just my memory from my researches last year. Not been there yet.

ladyphotographer said:

To the gentleman who went to Norway to photograph the Northern lights in 2013 with his Olympus OMD-E1:

How did it work out> I plan to go tot Iceland to photograph the northern lights with my Olympus E-1 and am interest in what ISO setting you got the best photographs. Any advice you can give me will be greatly appreciated.

Ladyphotographer

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I am not an expert in this field but tried it on two or three trips last year. You need to be aware of the rule of 500 (600 some say) which you must cut in half on M4/3 sensors. The considerations for M4/3 are the aforementioned rule which affects how long of an exposure one can make without apparent star motion (dependent on lens length (angle of view), the total amount of light let in (dependent on the aperture, length of exposure, and ISO) and noise that limits the quality of the photo (dependent on the ISO and length of exposure).

There are many sources of information on the various parameters, here is one of them: http://www.davemorrowphotography.com/2012/12/star-photography-post-processing.html

Most will shoot RAW and go through sophisticated post processing in Photoshop and others. Several video tutorials are available online for post processing.

Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye is great and then Olympus 12mm f/2. I would pick 12-40mm PRO if needing to use it for other uses too.

venice said:

Sorry that I can't help you from personal experience but here is a review article that seems to do a good job of covering the essentials.

http://www.alaskaphotographics.com/blog/how-to-photograph-the-northern-lights-with-a-digital-camera/

Enjoy!!

-Bill

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Looks like your link above is no longer working. Here's the updated link: https://www.alaskaphotographics.com/blog/how-to-photograph-the-northern-lights/

I had the chance to photograph the northern lights once with the OMD-5.

I used the Panasonic 7-14 F4

the Samyang (some are branded Rokinon or Walimex) 7.5 Fisheye

and the Lumix 20 1.7

So both wide angle zoom should work fine but consider a couple of small fast prime as suggested by other.

IF intensity is high you really don`t need a fast lens, but of course would help . but for weak northern-lights that you barely see by eyes a fast lens is for sure a big advantage advantage.

I was in Lapland (Finnish side in Nellim)

Frozen lakes, and open landscapes. Northern light were bright and taking the whole horizon. So the wide angles were the most used.

With wide angle my favorite pictures were the one with the Samyang (that is in fact wider than than the Lumix 7-1mm).

Also the 7-14 worked well just liked less than the fisheye. This lens can be tricky to focus manually when is very dark. this is really the only thing I do not like about it.

But of all pictures I took the one I like more was taken with the Lumix 20mm

I did not prepared myself reading some tutorial or getting good advice. So I made a lot of technical mistakes (Especially with aperture and ISO) but still happy with the results also printed up to A3 size.

All pictures with tripod. Ah Buy spare batteries if it is very cold.


Samyang 7.5


Lumix 7-14 at 7mm


Samyang 7.5


Lumix 20 mm


Lumix 7-14 at 7 mm

I think he has his answers

great shots though!

Anyone that can comment what lens for olympus mark em10 would be the best for the lights?

NewGirlLiz said:

Thanks for these replies - and thanks for the article, Bill. Some great points in it. I'll add it to all the others I've bookmarked!

I think I agree about the 9-18 over the 7-14. Only thing, though, is that the highest aperture is F4 - which feels a bit inadequate for the dark conditions - hence thinking about the 12 mm fixed lens with the larger aperture.

Click to expand...

I would definitely opt for the faster aperture. I'm a big fan of the Leica 12mm F/1.4. You may or may not know that the beauty of MFT is we can mix and match Lumix and Olympus lenses. I'm regularly able to shoot northern lights at 800ISO with this lens at 15 seconds. If you start getting beyond 20 seconds with a 24mm lens the stars will start to move on you. Here's a recent image I shot with this lens on a Lumix G9. I shot the same scene a few nights later with the same lens and the Olympus E-M1 Marklll.




Lumix G9 with Leica 12mm F/1.4 Exposure was 15 seconds at F/1.4 800 ISO



--
Daniel J. Cox
www.naturalexposures.com/corkboard

Len_Gee said:

jwinberg1 said:

venice said:

Sorry that I can't help you from personal experience but here is a review article that seems to do a good job of covering the essentials.

http://www.alaskaphotographics.com/blog/how-to-photograph-the-northern-lights-with-a-digital-camera/

Enjoy!!

-Bill

Click to expand...

I have had personal experience, and wish I had read this article beforehand!

Either of those 2 wide angle lenses should do fine. TAKE OFF ANY FILTERS, they generate circular interference rings on those long exposures at the aurora wavelengths. Turn ON long exposure noise reduction. Shoot RAW at a high ISO, 1600 - 3200 should do fine. LOCK everything down firmly on a sturdy tripod. Try the "bulb live view developing", should work fine on the EM-1.

Good luck, and enjoy........... Jack Winberg

Click to expand...

Isn't it really hard to get good pics of the Northern Lights? The Northern Lights the same as the Aurora Borealis?

And, is it possible to shoot this phenomena from the Southern Hemisphere? Is there a Southern Lights?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Yes they’re the same thing - Aurora Borealis = Northern Lights.

The same phenomenon in the Southern Hemisphere is called the Aurora Australis, or Southern Lights (funnily enough).

A lot of ease/difficulty will depend on the conditions on the day. Certain sites also monitor and advise the times of highest activity.

Ijones027 said:

Anyone that can comment what lens for olympus mark em10 would be the best for the lights?

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Yes, I can. However, user who excavated the tread from 2013 / 2018 is the golden shovel winner

Ad rem:

Any lens that is WIde Angle and fast. Note, it don't have to be UWA lens. Just WA and fast. It should have little coma fully open.

I personaly used P. 14/2.5 (not very optimal) in the past and O. 17/1.8 currently, as they were my usual lowlight travel primes (small and lightweight). P. 15/1.7 would have similar usability.

If You go for 100% dedicated aurora trip, You may think about something more sophisticated, at the cost of bulk (and usually price). My first choice here would be Sigma 16/1.4 - relatively low cost for such fast WA prime and excellent quality (I still think about buying it for Scandinavian trips...). There are also radical choices like these:


Note, that Voigtlander 17.5/095 has serious coma up to F/2.0, so it has in fact little sense compared to relatively cheap Sigma, V. 10.5/0.95 is even worse so I didn't put it on the list at all. Generally, You may think about using F/0.95-1.2 glass in terms of very short shutter times to catch very fine aurora structures at the cost of little more ugly stars in the background, aspecially at the corners of the frame.

Some people use fisheye for auroras, but it's rather specific choice, for "almost whole sky" images. As generally going into UWA lens means sacrifying total aperture, the best choice here is O. 8/1.8 FE, though there are some options f/2.8-3.5 here. I don't know anything about their quality, excluding good, old Samyang 8/3.5 FE, which unfortunately is pretty slow.

Regards

-J.

I have family in northern Sweden. Over the years, their smartphone shots of the northern lights have been consistently stunning. They are primarily video photographers but seem to have no issues delivering good stills results with smartphones. Maybe consider KISS.

JLWPhoto said:

I think he has his answers

great shots though!

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Thank you

Stefano