Fortunate enought to be going iceland on tuesday.yayee!

Hoping to catch the infamous Northern Lights amongst other cool things they have to offer. I have a Nikon point and shoot and mobile phone.
However i thought i would dig the old manual SLR out and give the 35mm ago.

what settings would you recommend for taking photos of the northern lights with?

see my lovley soviet cold war esque camera

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Many thanks

Liam

Stop the lens down to f11, leave shutter on bulb mode ( basically keeps the shutter open for as long as you press the button) and take 1-2 minute exposures. This requires a tripod, or beanbag & a remote release is handy..

This was taken with my EOS 630 a couple of years ago now.
Film was Fuji 400, f/3.5, 15 seconds. I got some Kodak 1600 to try now.

Basically as catfishsalesco said;

smallest F-stop on that camera is F16, so that.
B (bulb) setting on tripod/mini tripod on fencepost, eg.
Instead of buying a remote shutter release (stops any camera shake when pressing the shutter button) just use the self-timer button to activate shutter.
Set focus to ‘infinity’.

On the contrary, I’d go wide open at f/2. And get a proper tripod.

Google is your friend… Northern Lights Tutorial

…although digital cameras are also your friend. Given the one off nature of the experience this reminds my why I love digital.

Good luck.

I would go for f11 as lenses can loose sharpness when fully stopped down..

Shooting aurora, you need to capture all the light you can. A wide aperture means you can use a shorter exposure time, so you get less blurring.

I’m with kiwijohn – usual recommendation is a fast wide angle lens either wide open or just stopped down a touch.

Eg

http://www.dennismammana.com/skyinfo/phototips/skyphoto_aurora.htm

I was thinking along the lines of when I was trying to catch lightning strikes with my 35mm set-up 🙄

Aurora, obviously moving, I see the reasoning behind F2.8 on a 28mm lens.