Aurora over Tasmania

Hi all,

Thought I'd share a couple of pictures from my Aurora hunt over the weekend. We had a pretty strong Aurora that went overhead instead of just on the horizon. It is amazing how different Aurora's can be - these to me are almost eerie and aliens are about to land, where as my favourite is a more traditional beams arcing up over the horizon.

Taken with a Panasonic G6 + Olympus 17mm F1.8 (both are panos). Any ideas how much improvement I'd see in quality if I updated to a G7?

xelnt wrote:

Hi all,

Thought I'd share a couple of pictures from my Aurora hunt over the weekend. We had a pretty strong Aurora that went overhead instead of just on the horizon. It is amazing how different Aurora's can be - these to me are almost eerie and aliens are about to land, where as my favourite is a more traditional beams arcing up over the horizon.

Taken with a Panasonic G6 + Olympus 17mm F1.8 (both are panos). Any ideas how much improvement I'd see in quality if I updated to a G7?

Since we live quite northerly (I live in NL) we have a considerable amount of noctilucent clouds.

Our geomagnetic lattitude does not favour us whereas Tasmania is clearly favoured! Good for you!

I would judge my GH4 (=G7) significantly better than my GH2 (=G6 IQ). Something similar is true about the EPL5/6/ EM10 etc...The noise is better, the dynamic range is clearly improved, but especially the colours and the tonality etc are visibly better from my subjective pov. If noise is your main issue though I'd suggest to move onto FF which will deliver 2 stops extra. Not just 1/2 a stop or so. The D750 may be even more..

Very nice pics btw and with 10second exposure at f1.8 this was a clearly visible aurora too I am sure.

Hi Jorginho,

Yeah this was a decent Aurora - I even saw my first proton arc with a beam going from the east to west horizons directly overhead - something that doesn't happen here very often. We've actually had a bad run over the last 12 months with weather and daylight interfering with our Aurora chasing - a number of big events have been blocked by daylight or clouds.

Thanks for the feedback re cameras. I'm not interested in full frame due to size / weight of the systems, and the camera needs to a good all rounder for travel and the other half to use. I'm looking for a decent improvement in shadow noise / DR - I find the G6 really struggles with noise in shadows and clouds at night unless the conditions are spot on.

This is my favourite from my last year or two chasing Aurora's.