Northern lights - How to photograph them?

I am off to Northern Finland in a week's time and would like to photograph the Northern Lights. I would be very grateful for any technical advice on the subject. Also if anyone knows of good sites for birds in the Ivalo area, it would be great to know. I am aware that there will be hardly any daylight at this time of the year.

Thanks,

Javier

Javier, for northern lights i would use either a standard 50mm or a 30mm lens with a fast aperture.
A good choice would be, if you dont have a fast canon Standard lens, the Sigma 30/1.4 DC lens, which i think sells for around £275.

Ofcourse you would use a tripod and i think i would go for 400 or 800 ISO and set the lens to infinity. Expose wide open for approx 16 sec with ISO 400. You will need to play around.

I am suprised you go to northern Finland now, i have always been under the impression that for good quality Northern lights january and february are better, as there is much more sun activity.

Hope this helps
Rene de Heer

I tend to use as wide a lens as I've got in my bag and always try to incorporate some kind of land feature into the scene too, anything such as an interesting tree, old castle, vehicle etc. These serve as good scale objects for the viewer, so that they can get a sense of how big and bright the aurora are.
I would very much like to try and get some aurora shots myself this year, purely to try some HDR software on them.
Don't be tempted to up your ISO from what you'd normally use for landscapes it only introduces noise that can be very visible.

Your holiday sounds like my idea of a dream holiday, although my wife has other thoughts on cold places.
Enjoy

John

The reason I am going now is a business meeting!!! (scientific congress in my case) so I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to do some photography.

Thanks for the advice,

Javier

John's advice seems good to me. A friend took the shot in the link below in Scotland last year (camera was balanced on roof of car with no beanbag so not sharp!) Containing some land element always seems like a good idea to me.

http://www.luhc.org.uk/photos/photo_2877.jpg

Best of luck and hope the congress goes well!

If you want to try and catch the Northern Lights in the UK you can get an early warning of activity here - http://www.dcs.lancs.ac.uk/iono/aurorawatch/

Edit...nearly forgot, they also have a gallery of shots here http://www.dcs.lancs.ac.uk/iono/photos/Iono_Group_Photo_Gallery/AuroraWatch_UK_Gallery/