When you think of Alaska what comes to mind? I think most people would agree that mountainous landscapes, wildlife and the Northern Lights would be high up on the list.
My Lumix served me well in Denali National Park
Last month I had the remarkable opportunity to visit Alaska and to aid me photographing some of the above I made sure to pack my Panasonic Lumix FZ1000. However it was a textbook example of all the gear, no idea. I was comfortable getting landscape and wildlife photos using the Intelligent auto setting, however capturing the Northern lights proved more difficult.
Alaska is a really weird place. By mid May there is 22 hours of daylight, and during the "darkest" period (roughly 02:00 and 03:00) the sun has still barely dipped below the horizon.
Thankfully before the land of the midnight sun stayed true to it's namesake, near the end of April there were still a couple of hours of nearly darkness that allowed the solar storms in the skies above to become visible.
Thanks to a live webcam of the skies I was able to check if the Aurora was visible from the comfort of my bed.
Many thanks to Birch Leaf Photography for the livestream
That small glimmer was enough for me to get out of bed and dressed ready to stand in a frozen field for hours.
However, Disaster. I had forgotten to pack my mobile phone tripod. The tripod that had allowed me to get clear night sky photos in the past.
This photo displayed the Aurora as it looks in person, a horizontal streak of light but as if it had many vertical tails.
Regardless I ran outside and using the night mode setting and not steady enough hands, the above shots on my Oneplus 8.
The blur was obvious and I quickly switched to my Lumix and a small tripod I had bought in Walmart.
A guide I had read online suggested using the clear nightscape mode for night sky photography.
15 Seconds exposure
8 Seconds exposure
8 Seconds exposure
6 Seconds exposure
At this point due I was just trying to take as many exposures as I could. Due to the rear screen resolution not being great, I was not able to see how blurry the photos were until we got inside after the lights faded.
The Oneplus photos despite being really blurry displayed the Aurora shimmer much more true to life, displaying the orange fading into green more clearly and the light having vertical streaks to it. Something the Lumix photos just displayed as a green smudge.
My question to the photography buffs here is this, in my situation how would you set up your camera?
In hindsight I realise I should have manually focused and not depended on the scenes setting auto focusing for me. But would that have fixed all my issues?