Encore

Tonights encore presentation of the aurora borealis was different then last.  There was no moon, which effected the lighting conditions greatly.  I also tried to take more controlled experiments with the camera. Last night I was just all over the place, changing settings, moving the tripod- totally over reacting in the excitement.  Tonight I was more precise about making incremental adjustments, in the long run that will be easier to learn from.

One big change tonight was shooting with "Long Exposure Noise Reduction" turned "ON".  This basically caused twice as long shutter speeds.  Once the timed shutter was complete, it required double the time to process.  The biggest difference I see from this is a lot more stars standing out.  The actual aurora doesn't seem any more or less vivid.  

My next step will be working harder to gaining critical focus.  I'm basically manually focused on infiniti. I read an interesting resource that recommended getting auto focus in the day time, then use athletic tape to secure the focus ring before putting it on manual.  Then set the lens aside and be careful not to bump it.  Since there was no moon, that would have been an ideal way to do it.  I tried to use the "Live View" feature of the D700, but the screen was just pitch dark and unhelpful.

At the peak of the storm my battery died.  Luckily I had the spare in my parka, but in those precious minutes the aurora peaked and dropped really low towards the river, as briefly seen in the photograph above.

I played a little with the ultra high ISO settings (Nikon H1.0 and H2.0), but I don't like how those images turned out.  I even tried playing with lower shutter speeds at those ISO's.  Right now I'm happiest with the ISO around 1600 and the shutter speed around 10" - 15" seconds.

I also learned to be a lot more careful with the tripod.  I accidentally bent one of the adjustment riser handles trying to force it.  The longer I stay in the cold the more brittle the metal, and harder it is to adjust the tripod.  Tonight it was around -53F.  I found rather then just using the handles, to carefully grab the entire camera and slowly make small adjustments, there is no smooth transition once the materials get that cold.  Even my parka fabric sounds different.