This is a small church at Lake Myvatn in northern Iceland. The aurora borealis was much darker than the illuminated church, so in order to expose correctly for the sky as well as the architecture I had to take two separate exposures. The photo of the northern lights was 13 seconds at f/2.8 and 1250 ISO. The exposure for the church was 1/125 at f/5.0 and 1250 ISO. I used the same ISO setting for both pictures because I wanted the noise to match in the composite. I used a 148mm focal length for the church (with a 100-400mm lens) and a 16mm focal length for the sky. The aurora borealis displays all year, but it can only be seen in the winter because in this far north country, that's when the sky gets totally dark. When shooting the night sky for the Milky Way or the aurora, I choose to use a shutter speed less than 20 seconds with a wide angle lens. This means the stars are points of light rather than the beginning of star trails.
2 Comments
Mar 18, 2022, 1:43:16 PM
Jim Zuckerman - Hi Steve,
I apologize for my tardy reply to you. I just discovered yesterday that all of the emails coming to me via my website were going to the spam folder, and I never check that folder because for years I never had any emails diverted there. So, again, I'm sorry. I'm going back many months to answer emails.
Thanks for the heads up on that. I had to change the way the blogs work because Google stopped supporting one of the software programs I was using.
Jim
Oct 18, 2021, 10:52:44 AM
Steve Upton - Hey Jim Just to let you know, your email blog has been coming without text for about a week now. In order to read your descriptive write ups, one must go to your site and then onto Jim's blog. Not sure that was intended. Always enjoy reading your daily write-ups.