4x5 aurora pix on cruise ship?

[greg_prior]

I hear that the aurora borealis will be active while I am on an

Alaska cruise ship. I'll have my Linhof Technika along, so I thought

I'd try for a shot. Some of the questions I have are:

 

1. What film? Fuji Provia 400 pushed to 1600?

 

2. Long exposures on a cruise ship. I'm assuming that even the best

tripod won't stop the motion of the ship. :-) Will the motion have a

bad effect on a 30 sec. exposure?

 

3. I have a 90mm f/6.8 Apo-Grandagon N. Should I rent/buy something

faster/wider?

 

4. I found a web page that suggests ISO 800, f/4, for 30 sec. I think

that equates to ISO 1600, f/6.8 for 45 sec (+- bracketing of course)?

 

I like to scan and print these at about 3'x4' (largest size on my

Giclee printer).

 

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

Thanks for you help, Greg

[art_haykin]

A 30 second exposure???!!! A 1/25th of a second exposure on a ship might be spoiled unless that vessel is dead still in the water.

[greg_prior]

OK, I checked and Provia 400 isn't available in sheets. Is the next best Kodak E200 pushed to 800?

 

Now my exposure time (wide open) is 90 seconds?

 

Thanks again, Greg

[link]

Greg,

 

There's no way to get sharp long exposures of the sky from a ship in the water. Never

gonna happen. You might try a 35mm camera with a fast prime lens to get the

shutter speed down to at least 1/60th.

 

Best bet is to swim to dry land and use your tripod.

[greg_prior]

Well, I don't think 1/25 and 1/60 will work. With a f/1.4 lens I would need ISO 200,000 film for 1/60. Maybe I could find a f/1.0 lens and get it down to 100,000 ISO though. :-)

 

I have never seen the aurora borealis, but I was under the impression that it moves in the sky so that some motion from the ship wouldn't be that noticeable. Maybe I shouldn't set my expectations too high.

 

-Thanks, Greg

[skygzr]

Here's one link to aurora photography...there's many, many more.

 

http://www.keweenawimage.com/auroraphoto.html

 

Your idea would work if you could get them to run the ship aground. Just too much motion, otherwise.

 

There's a very nice naked eye sunspot group right now. Sometimes these big spots produce big storms, making for active aurora.

 

The other real problem is that it gets dark so late up there...sunrise in Anchorage today is 5:10AM, sunset is 11:00PM...it gets dark around 2:00AM if it happens at all.

 

Good luck, in any case!

[joe_photo]

&iquest&iquest&iquest"Never gonna happen."???

 

I think if the aurora was going on directly in front of or behind the ship you might have a chance because shooting in either of those directions would lessen the effect of the movement and might give you some nifty reflections.

[john lehman, college alask]

Check the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Center site for much more information on auroras and how to photograph them.

 

I assume if you really expect to see the aurora that your cruise is in September; at the moment it never gets dark enough up here to see it, although it is certainly there :-) Check the nautical almanac for the times of astronomical twilight - when it is not at least that dark, you are not likely to see it.

 

Based on almost 20 years of watching the aurora during Alaska winters, I doubt if it would be possible to get a good picture from a ship - even where we live 15 miles from the nearest town the aurora is not THAT bright.

[joe_photo]

Here's link to the NOAA website with POES satellite shots of where auroras are most active along with viewing tips.<p><a href="http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap/">Auroral Activity Extrapolated from NOAA POES</a></p>

[phil_erickson]

My profession is space plasma physics and in particular geomagnetic storms in the upper atmosphere which eventually drive auroral displays. A good basic-level resource for determining activity levels and when one might expect auroras is at

 

http://www.spaceweather.com

 

The Geophysical Institute at U of Alaska is also a good resource. If you are indeed going up in September, the equinoxes are statistically more likely to have activity. The science of predicting storm activity / auroral displays is still pretty embryonic, but if you're lucky, you can get approximately a 1 to 3 day heads-up when a solar flare sends material Earthward.

 

Look for the words "halo coronal mass ejection" (CME) in forecasts for the big clue - this means people observing the Sun in ultraviolet or x-ray light have seen material from a solar outburst in what appears to be all directions outward from the center of the sun, forming a halo. The only way this can happen is if material is either (a) pointed right at us, which is good, or (b) moving directly away from us, which means we see nothing. See what I mean about hard to predict?

 

Good luck and good seeing. If you do get something, be sure to post it to the aurora image gallery on the spaceweather.com web site - I usually only see 35mm or digital images there, and a 4x5 transparency would be quite a knockout addition.

[robert_hurd]

You have gotten some great posts with great info, so I thought I would add some anecdotal thoughts.

 

In '82 to 85', I spent three, 5-month winters on the north coast of Alaska, and the previous posting about the challenge of seeing Aurora during summmer is probably correct. Plus, sometimes the aurora moves rapidly, sometimes not. If the ship is not moving too rapidly, then the ship movement may be no worse than the aurora movement itself.

 

If you are going in winter, then I am sure you are already thinking of how to work out a way to keep your film and equipment warm, since all rubber, plastic, or leather components may get hard and brittle pretty quickly. This would include your bellows, of course, especially since it may be necessary to equalize the temperature inside the bellows. If the expected temperatures during your trip are likely to get down to 20 to 40 below, then it may be good to keep a back-up 35 mm inside your parka, just to be sure of capturing some images to supplement your 4x5.

 

Also (this next comment may seem silly, but I assure you that it is not), keep your loupe somewhat warm and away from your eyeball. One of the hazards encountered by surveyors in the '80's was frostbitten eyes, from placing their moist eye surface too close to the subzero glass of telescopic lenses.

 

Good Luck!

 

Robt.

[ole_tjugen]

Some very nice pictures have been taken with ISO 400, f:1.2, at 1 sec. My fastest LF lens is f:3.5, which would give 8 seconds; f:6.8 will then be about two stops slower, giving 30 seconds.

 

Now 30 second is really too slow for an aurora, as they can move quite rapidly. The recommendations I have seen are for no more than 5 to 8 seconds.

 

Even 1 second is too long if you're on a moving ship. It's not the movement which is the problem, but the vibrations from the engines. Tripods and ships' engines just don't mix - I've tried. So unless the engines are shut off and the sea is absolutely calm, all you'll get at 6 seconds is a blur.

 

As to photographing auroras in September, there should be no problem. After mid-August it gets dark enough even in Alaska (here I'm extrapolating from northern Norway, which is even farther north).

[greg_prior]

Thanks for all the replies. Just to finish out the topic, I did see the aurora borealis from the

fan tail of the ship as we traveled South on August 9th out of Skagway. It turns out there

was another problem to photographing the event. That was the lights on the ship. It was

really quite bright, and even made eye viewing difficult.

 

The ship was fairly stable on the fan tail. The ships motion was mostly rolling rather than

pitching, so the motion would have shown up as a small amount or rotation rather than

the horizon raising and falling.

 

So, no pix this trip, but at least I got to see it!!!

 

-Greg