The Northern Lights

Shooting stars and bright, bright lights!

We saw the lights! They were really as incredible as you expect them to be. We knew when we set out that night that our chances of seeing the lights were slim. Though a chance still existed and so we hired a car and set out to find the best spot to see them with all the information we had gathered from various websites about Aurora Borealis activity and cloud cover, so when we saw them we were happy to take what we were given.

We were so delighted to see stars and clear skies. 

Imagine our delight when we saw this! The start of the light show. The funny thing is that without Lloyd's camera we wouldn't of known what we were looking at when the lights initially started. It looked like nothing more than some white light in the sky, though when shot with a long shutter (read Lloyd's detailing of how he shot the lights below) they appeared green and swirly. It was the first of the sky show and we were about ready to settle with what we got, it wasn't the huge explosions of green light that we had associated with Aurora Borealis, but it was still amazing. Anyway...

We were all huddled in the car trying to defrost our freezing bodies. We were doing ten minutes outside, 5 minutes inside the car. At this point we'd been driving around for 2 or more hours and had been parked in this spot for an hour or longer. It was getting close to midnight and we were about to go home, happy with what we'd seen.

Then the skies lit up. All of a sudden we were seeing spectacular green lights coming in huge waves of movement. It started in one spot and eventually spread all the way across the sky. This was what we associated with Aurora Borealis! It was truly magnificent. We were all gobsmacked, we had that giddy feeling in our tummies like we were kids on Christmas morning. 

It was a sensational display and well worth the hours spent finding the perfect spot. We were all by ourselves in the middle of Iceland, no 50 or so tourists screaming and taking photos with their flash. It was special. Enjoy Lloyd's stunning photos and take the lights in vicariously through us.

By this point we didn't need a camera to know what we were looking at. It looked like this, but better in person. There were times when it felt like you could reach out and grab the green light.

This was a quick photo taken driving back to Reykjavik. It just kept going and going. In fact the light show only stopped because we drove back into the light pollution of Reykjavik city.

TIPS FOR SEEING THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

We researched for many hours during our trip in Iceland in order to find out how to maximise our chances of seeing the lights. We were initially going to join one of the many tour groups that Reykjavik has to offer. However the general feeling from reading forums and feedback was the tours weren't worth the hassle or the money. Just imagine a bus full of grumpy inpatient tourists, all needing to use the bathroom at some point in the night in the middle of  nowhere. Also these buses all take you to the same destinations - the lighthouse in Reykjavik, the car park of the Blue Lagoon or the church at Thingvellir National Park. But what if the lights are only visible on your given night in another destination a bit further out from where these tour buses travel?  

This is why we chose to rent a car. So once you have the car where exactly do you drive? Well we are definitely no experts but here are the basic points and tips  to be aware of in order to see the northern lights:

* You have to drive away from Reykjavik's city light pollution. You don't actually realise how much light a city emits into the sky until you photograph the sky with a long shutter speed. Generally the idea is to drive at least 30-45 minutes away from Reykjavik. 

* You have to drive to a general location where there are clear skies. Just use your eyes when driving around AND keep an eye on this cloud cover website. On this particular night there were only clear skies to the east of Reykjavik so this was the general direction we drove. We ended up seeing the lights from the top of Kerid crater.

* Aurora Borealis has to be active on the night in the area you drive to. This dedicated Aurora website updates hourly to tell you where the lights are most active. Sometimes in order to see the best lights you have to drive north. It should also give you a general direction in the sky to look to. Also the rating system of activity on this website changes quickly and should only be used as a general guide as we were out on a 1 to 2 rated night but the lights we witnessed were surely closer to a 5 or 6. 

* Sometimes you just have to have patience. We were waiting around Kerid crater for around an hour before the lights decided to come out, and as we pointed out, it then took them another 30 minutes to get bigger and brighter. Keep in mind to turn all lights off and don't look at your bright mobile phones as your eyes should be given time to adjust to the dark. 

* Sometimes even with all these things done correctly the final thing you need is luck. We were very lucky without a doubt and the fact we only had to wait an hour was great as a lot of people only see the lights after 4-5 hours of waiting. In the end if we didn't see the lights we had fun just driving around the mountains in the dark surrounded by good friends (another reason to rent a car and not go on a tour bus).

So this is how you see the lights but once you're there how do you photograph them?

Once again I'll start by saying we are no experts but here are some general tips to keep in mind:

* Obviously the best way to shoot the northern lights is to have a good camera and wide lens. Lloyd shot these with a Canon 5d mk III and used the wide 16-35mm 2.8 lens. A wide lens is essential to get the whole sky in the picture. 

* You have to shoot with at least a 30 second open shutter. 20 seconds worked too but obviously 30 let in more of the lights glow. All the photos shot above were 30 seconds.

* Lloyd shot these in manual mode with  the aperture wide open. Simply put even with a 30 second exposure anything above 2.8 still wasn't letting in enough light so 2.8 aperture was the way to go. ISO was set low to make sure there wasn't much noise. It was set to 400.

* It may sound obvious but you need a tripod. Lloyd funnily enough doesn't own a tripod and had to actually put his camera on the cold floor and use an umbrella and glasses case to prop the lens up. Haha.

* Take your filter off your lens if you have one, even if it's one of those expensive ones. The northern lights interact with the filter and creates unwanted banding.

* One thing that never came to mind until Lloyd reached our destination was the fact that a lot of the newer lenses when manually focused actually focus past infinity, meaning you can't just turn the focusing ring until it reaches the end. When you keep in mind that no normal camera can automatically focus on the stars in the dark sky, you're kind of stuck with a camera telling you it can't focus to infinity unless you do it yourself. Luckily on this night there was a small town with some lights on in the distance which Lloyd used to manually focus on. Without this town Lloyd would have only been guessing on focus. The only advice we can offer is to automatically focus to infinity during the day or in the city and then use tape to secure this position of the lens. Then turn manual focus on so the camera doesn't try and focus again afterwards.

And that's all the advice we have to offer. If you have any other questions feel free to ask and we can do our best to help out.