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TritonTheDark OP t1_iqth9fa wrote

Northern Lights over one of the coolest mountains I've ever seen. I was about to fall asleep when it suddenly got very bright in my tent. I looked outside and straight above was this crazy, green glob of Aurora. Glob is the only word I can think of to describe it - it was unlike any Aurora I'd seen before. I yelled to wake my friends up and got dressed. I got out of my tent, looked up, and of course the Aurora had died down significantly. But it was still beautiful and I figured since I was dressed I'd wander around and watch the show anyway.

One of the benefits of going far North is that you can often look in any direction to watch the Aurora. In fact, I don't think I've ever had a trip to the Arctic or near Arctic where this wasn't the case. For this shot I was aimed almost directly south! This image is not a day/night composite, however I did combine three back-to-back exposures for the sake of dynamic range and avoiding too much motion blur in the Aurora.

All shots: 14mm, f/4
Foreground: 30s + 15s ISO 6400
Sky: 6s ISO 3200

I no longer carry fast lenses meant for nighttime shooting, so it was difficult to get a usable result, but combining mean stacking and AI noise reduction did the trick.

If anyone would like to see more of my photography, I post regularly on Instagram @tristan.todd!

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curioushom t1_iqwmi54 wrote

Wonderful shot! Thanks for the great narrative and technical explanation. I also struggle with carrying the extra weight of fast lenses, stacking is a good solution.

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TritonTheDark OP t1_iqx0e8y wrote

Yeah it just doesn't make sense to carry around my 14-24 f/2.8 all the time. Switching to mirrorless allowed me to save a ton of weight. Thanks to amazing stabilization I barely even need a tripod, so I switched to a smaller/lighter one for the few situations where I prefer it.

And I could have done a much better job with the stacking, but I was too excited by the Aurora and forgot to take more frames lol.

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