The Quiet Picture

The weather forecast kept saying that last night would be completely overcast. The full moon and stars in the sky disagreed though and after all the snowfall earlier this week, the conditions were just perfect to try some night photography.

As I was peering up through the tree crowns I noticed that the sky wasn’t quite as clear as it had seemed at first – there was some very light cloud that dimmed the stars a little bit. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, I like the effect of the clouds especially when they are blurred by the long shutter speed.

I wish we could have more nights like this. That feeling when you’re in a quiet snowcovered forest and the moon is shining bright enough so you don’t need a flashlight to see where you’re going… awesome!

I was really looking forward to enjoying the winter landscape today as well. Yesterday they were still saying that it would be around -15°C today but it was -22°C in the morning and now the forecast is around -20 degrees the whole day. Not sure if I enjoy the winter landscape quite that much… I hope the temperatures will rise a little bit in the afternoon because it kills me to miss the scenery as it is at the moment!

Läste i DN att “astronomer har tagit de hittills skarpaste bilderna på Betelgeuse” och var förstås jättenyfiken på att se bilderna. Och det visade sig att allt är relativt i rymden – tittar man på bilden i artikeln så förstår man att det finns nog ganska så många sätt att definiera “knivskarp”, LOL!

It looked like I would be in luck – clear skies in the afternoon. Then at sunset, clouds in the west. Argh! No problems to see the moon and Venus, but with the clouds in the horizon, the orange gradient was conspicuous in its absence. When’s my next chance? Hmm… 4 weeks from now, actually. Except Venus will be gone. A quick check in the Sky Calendar reveals that Venus will be a tought subject next winter – it follows the sun too close, and it’s not nearly as bright as it has been this winter. Oh well, can’t win ‘em all. I guess I’ve said that before…

Yesterday was half overcast, but when I came home the sky was starting to clear and Venus and the crescent moon were shining brightly in south-west. Photographing the crescent is one of my ambitions, so I set out although it was a little bit too late – there was very little light left in the horizon. Just half an hour earlier would’ve made a world of difference! The cool thing about the crescent is that it looks more like a full moon here. The 6-sec exposure picked up the shaded part, you can even make out all the moon features in the full-res image. If I’m really lucky, I’ll have another chance today, even if the moon and Venus won’t be this nicely aligned today.

[This (very long) story starts on Saturday 7 February]

It’s full moon on Monday and the moonset/moonrise co-incides with sunrise/sunset. It can only mean one thing – I have a day off and I’m heading to the mountains. I’ve booked myself to the Messlingen hostel and it’s snowing, so it’s almost a repeat of my trip from last year. Although a year ago the skies cleared for the D-day, we’ll see if I can get lucky twice.

Saturday

On the way to Funäsdalen, there’s one photo-op just before Hede, I’ve driven past it too many times without stopping. Now I remedied that and took my pictures. When I started the car, I found out that the right rear wheel had locked. I got it running again after reversing a little, then forward and reverse a bit more. After a fuel stop in Funäsdalen it almost did it again, this time only with the warning lights though and the same trick fixed it again.

It was still only noon, so plenty of time for a hike. I had initially planned to do scouting, but the snowfall made it impossible, there’s just simply no views to look at in any direction. But I wasn’t discouraged, I can work with mountains and I can work with snowfall so I was bound to find something. And indeed I did, lovely mountain birches at the treeline, and then just when I was wondering if I would dare to hike to the peak of the Ramundberget mountain despite the weather, I saw an avalanche warning sign so I prompty turned back.

When I got back to the car at Walles, I got a nasty surprise – both wheels were stuck and there was no amount of coaxing I could do to get the wheels spinning. Crap. Then I had a real stroke of luck and a guy in an SUV came by, I explained the problem to him and he towed me to the road, where we hoped that the wheels would be jolted to action. Alas, no, but there was a fully equipped garage just a few metres away so the good samaritan pulled my car to it so we could give the wheels some TLC with a heat gun and a sledgehammer. I was ever so happy to get the car working again… but as I was driving down, the anti-spin and ABS lights came back on. I got down ok though, and then once again I had to do some reversing and forwarding to get it all working again.

At that point I just wanted to get to Messlingen. There would’ve been some daylight left, but I wasn’t feeling like stopping anywhere in case the wheels would strike again. The hostel turned out to be very cozy indeed and I was the only guest so I had the place to myself, a pleasant surprise after all those nasties I had today.

Sunday

The snowfall continued, so there was still no point to try to do any scouting. I took the snowmobile trail from Messlingen towards Storsjö, because it was the shortest way to get above the treeline. Once I had hiked all the way up there, a snowmobiler stopped and asked if I needed a lift. Very kind of him, but a bit too late…

After lunch, I wanted to drive down to Funäsdalen and check out a few places. Except, both wheels were well and firmly frozen again. I was disgusted. And I promise you, I did not have handbrake on overnight if that’s what you’re thinking! I got a hammer from the reception but it wasn’t enough to release the wheels (note to self: buy a sledgehammer). After some thinking, I decided that my best option was to call road rescue and have the car towed to a warm garage in Funäsdalen, it will have to thaw out completely because otherwise the problem will just repeat itself like it has done. When I spoke with the people at the reception, and then with the car rescue guy, I found out that I’m not alone with this problem. Apparently a certain type of brake is more prone to these problems so when there is so much snow getting into the wheels, melting and freezing, you just get problems.

I hate my car. Ok fine, I don’t really hate my car. But I sure don’t like it either.

Monday

First thing after breakfast, I called a taxi to take me to Funäsdalen to get my car. The rear wheels were bare now – I can actually see inside, wow! But when I pulled out, the infernal beeping started again warning me about something (no warning lights were on), I guess the car didn’t appreciate all the beating it received yesterday. With every beep, I was missing that sledgehammer more and more… but as I persisted on driving along, the beeping finally stopped. I got to the hardware store and bought myself an axe (in lieu of a sledgehammer).

I seemed to be on a string of bad luck, because the snowing continued. Momentarily in the morning it had seemed like it would clear, but nix. And not only falling snow, but there was also a heavy wind whipping the trees, blowing a whole lot of snow in the air. Sometimes I can be a real optimist though, so I took the snowcat from Bruksvallarna to Kariknallen. When we got on top, I wondered if this was just another one of my stupid decisions – the wind was horrible, impossible to face it because the snow was just like small needles. Thankfully for the most of the way down the wind was on my back, so it wasn’t that bad. Lousy for pictures though, you can imagine the visibility under these conditions.

But let’s be positive for a moment. I don’t have any regrets for missing all the scouting, because the moonrise wasn’t anything to photograph anyway. Too many clouds, even if the sky was finally starting to clear.

By the evening, the sky really was clear apart from a few clouds in the horizon all around. Photographing the night sky with mountains inthe foreground had been one of my goals, but I didn’t feel like driving to a location now. Firstly, the wind was still stiff and if I felt it here among the trees, then it would be really bad in the open places where I’d need to go. I drove through snow drifts today and it wasn’t fun. Secondly, I have to re-build my trust relationship with my car. The prospect of getting stuck in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere was not appealing!

However, after I saw Orion and Sirius from my room window, I just had to do something so I set out on foot. Finding suitable spots was hard though and I had second thoughts about driving somewhere better, but in the end I just didn’t dare. I’ve had enough mishaps for this trip already.

Tuesday

Officially, I’m at work today. But since it hasn’t been exactly relaxing when half my mind has been occupied with whether or not the car will move, I figured that this was my last chance to get anything out of my mini-vacation (I did get an ok from my boss!). But when it rains, it pours – they called from work last night. Nothing I could do, I’m really sorry, but in the morning I was probably more stressed than I would’ve been without this holiday.

The good news? The car was fine. All four wheels spinning, I think it’s a great feature in a car. And it was also clear skies, so I had a chance to see the moonset. I watched it go down, and then waited for the sun to come up, and I was freezing for all the standing still… but I finally felt at peace again. Might be hell to pay at work tomorrow, but today was heaven.

I finally got a decent picture of Orion. An almost half moon is lighting up the foreground, but it should be looking even better on Monday or Tuesday when the moon is getting fuller. If only we get clear skies, that is – it was supposed to be sunny today but the clouds didn’t go away until at sunset. Anyway, I need the extra light so I can reduce the ISO. I don’t know what the noise reduction kept doing because it sure didn’t remove the noise in these ISO 250 images. Sometimes I do wish I had a high-end full frame camera… Or dare I hope for a revolutionary new noise reduction technique (that actually works) in Canon 60D?

Venus is by far the brightest “star” in the sky these days (nights). Its magnitude is a whopping -4.5, compare that to the -1.5 of Sirius which is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere. In February they can both be seen in the evening sky for comparison, but for now I was just stunned to see Venus right after sunset. The picture is taken about 1.5 hours after sunset though.

The sunset wasn’t otherwise special, but a few mother-of-pearl clouds were a nice surprise.

The weather has been very much overcast lately so I haven’t had a chance to try out my star 15 theory until tonight. Full moon is on Friday but there’s plenty enough light to go around already, I hardly needed my flashlight in the snow covered forest. It made composition easier as well because it was actually possible to see through the viewfinder, the only thing I was left wanting was a swivelling LCD because now I had to keep kneeling under the camera to look at the display… but that’s nothing. I had such a great time, the thermometre said 12 degrees below but I was warm and cosy as I kept walking around and pointing my camera up to the sky!

I found out that photographing Cassiopeia is easy enough. At this time of the evening, Cassiopeia is straight above your head so I was literally pointing the camera straight up for a bull’s eye composition. Unfortunately, there aren’t any other constellations of interest high up in the sky – Auriga, Cygnus, Gemini and Orion and even the Big Dipper are lower at this time of the year/evening. Photographing towards the horizon turned out to be a lot harder than straight up between the tree crowns. In a way though, I think it helps to have a fish-eye lens which exaggerates the convergence of the trees, so it becomes a feature in itself rather than an irritation.

The only thing left now is Orion, it had already risen when I was taking these pictures, but I just couldn’t find a suitable composition for it. So my beloved Orion will just have to wait for another evening…

When I started to photograph the night sky, I read that I should use a wideangle lens, high ISO, big aperture and bulb setting with remote. Unless of course I wanted to photograph the rings of Saturn or the Andromeda galaxy, in which case I needed a telescope, but I’m not an astronomer so I stick to the basics. It all sounds simple enough but it seems like there are as many settings to use as there are people giving advice. So in the end, the best way to learn is to not listen to the advice and make your own mistakes and it seems like every time I point my camera at the stars, it’s a new mistake (and a lesson)!

My interest in astronomy is pretty much limited to the stars visible with naked eye. I’ve never felt the need to invest in a telescope, but I frequently study star maps and try to learn the names of the constellations and stars. So when I photograph the night sky, I normally want to have a recognisable constellation in it. Star trail pictures can be really cool and I’ve done some of those, but in the end I found that I’m much happier with small dots of light instead of streaks and I want to top off the picture with a silhouette of something (trees are best).

So what I’ve learned is that you have to keep the exposure at max 15 sec in order for the stars to appear as dots. There’s ever so little streaking even then, but it’s only visible in the full scale original. And if you want real star trails, then you need a minimum of 15 minutes or otherwise those streaks will have an appearance of camera shake because they are too short to come across as genuine trails. That’s my star 15 rule – you know, sunny 16, moon 11 and now star 15!

Once you’ve decided which effect you want, there are other decisions to be made. Let’s say that I want to photograph the stars as dots and I’ve set the camera to 15 seconds. Now I have to decide how many stars I want to record (or how dark I want the sky to be). A wide open aperture is almost a must, so the only thing left to adjust is the ISO speed. ISO 200 is a starting point, it will give you the bright stars but you’ll probably end up going higher to get some of the fainter stars as well and more definition in the foreground (=better silhouette). You’ll want at least a little bit of moonlight to lighten up the sky, otherwise the sky will be just as black as your foreground which makes the foreground a moot point.

But let’s say that I want the star trail effect. ISO 100 is doable and you can stop down, anything to get a longer exposure. However, there’s a risk that the trails will be very faint with these settings because there just simply isn’t enough light hitting the sensor. With a long enough exposure you can bring out detail in the foreground, but those trails are stubbornly faint even for the brightest stars. I’m guessing it’s because the brightness of a star is kind of an absolute? The star will keep moving along during the exposure so it will not “collect” light the same way the foreground and sky does, thus you end up with faint streaks and only for the bright stars while the foreground and sky look correctly exposed. Just compare the long exposure on the left to the first picture which is much darker overall, but the stars are much brighter in comparison to the trails.

So for the star trails, the solution is to photograph on a dark night with maybe a moon crescent to lighten the sky ever so little. Then you can bump up the ISO and stop down without a risk of your foreground and sky becoming unnaturally light, all the while gaining enough sensitivity in the sensor to catch decent trails for even the faintest stars.

What did I say about learning by mistake? The next opportunity is in early December when the first quarter moon is up in the sky in the evening. Just no clouds and no wind…

I was in a hurry to get some sleep last night so I will write down the full experience now. I’m new at aurora photography (and night photography in general) so I have to take some notes to learn.

But before I get to the nuts and bolts of the event, I just have to say this – it was awesome! It was just me, my camera, the northern lights and an owl howling in the neighbourhood. Well worth the sleep deprivation!

1. Composition

I used a hot shoe bubble level to level the camera and pointed it in the general direction of the northern lights. Take a picture, check the LCD and then adjust camera position, repeat process until the desired composition is reached. It worked out so well that I didn’t even need to crop the pictures in post-processing.

How in the world they did this with film I’ll never know!

I wasn’t spoiled with foreground options. We have forest everywhere (even if de-forestation is one my favourite complaints) so there aren’t many open views within a walking distance, especially those towards north and without light pollution. I was standing on a forest clearing with these lonely trees scattered around, so it was just a matter of picking out the most suitable tree to provide a silhouette against the lights. Considering how dark the pictures are, it’s safe to say that the aurora alone wouldn’t lift the photo. Even so, it’s a close call – there’s an awful lot of “dark matter” in the frame.

I’m also glad that the Sigma 15mm f2.8 fisheye is earning its keep now. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I found very little use for it last summer – I just can’t handle wideangles, fisheye or straight. But now with the auroras, I would have found myself in a spot of bother with the 24-105mm f4. Calling it a wideangle on the 1.6 crop factor sensor would be very generous!

2. Exposure

I had done my homework on what settings to use when photographing auroras. I didn’t have any help from the moon last night though, so my starting point of ISO 400 and 10 sec, lens wide open seemed a bit too dark and I lost some of the faint peripheral auroral light with that. I stepped up to ISO 500 and 15 sec, but when the aurora started moving (most of the time it just seemed to glow and not “dance” as you normally see in the northern light images), I went back down to 10 sec to catch the detail.

ISO 500, f2.8, 10 sec

Moonlight would really help, I hate the noise of ISO 500. Not that the noise was pretty at ISO 400 either. The digital noise is a bit too patterned as compared to film, making it twice as undesirable.

I checked fotosidan to see if other people have posted pictures from last night, and the aurora pictures in general. I was interested to see that they had used considerably longer exposures – in many cases over a minute. That helps to get the ISO down (and the lens can be stopped down as well), but the downside is that with longer exposures, you start getting star trails and that’s not good. The small trails can’t be seen in the web images, but they are most definitely there in the full size image. 15 sec will prevent trailing in the northern sky like in these images, so if I need more light, it will have to come from boosting the ISO rather than making longer exposures.

3. Focus

I started with the lens focused on infinity. I wasn’t sure what that would do with my foreground trees, so I tried with different focus settings – focus just shy of the infinity mark, on the mark, and little beyond. The 40D preview picture isn’t very sharp because it uses the low res JPG, but it is possible to compare different pictures so I used these different focus settings in consecutive frames and then compared them to one another, and was able to determine that the focus setting just shy of the infinity mark was best. When I got the pictures on the computer, I was happy to see that it had indeed been the correct decision!

4. Light

Being a night photography newbie, I keep discovering new things every time I try. For example, these long exposures can catch light that my eye doesn’t see.

I don’t know if it’s some digital idiosyncrasy or if the auroral light really was like that, but my eye was only seeing varying strengths of green, while the picture shows some other hues.

ISO 500, f2.8, 15 sec

The sensor also caught some light pollution in the north (left of the birch in the above image), although I wasn’t able to see it. I reckon it must be KÃ¥rböle. To ENE, there was a visible glow of light (lower right edge in the image), maybe Ramsjö or even Ã…nge (100 km as the crow flies). And now that I’ve been staring the full res images, I can see that there is actually just the faintest of orange glows across almost the whole horizon below the green lights, and I’ve no idea where it comes from.

Now I’m just waiting for the next opportunity to see and shoot the auroras before the season is over!