So, tonight I joined sixty others by signing up for an evening “Northern Lights” tour. We jumped on two busses and drove over an hour into the mountains in order to get away from the lights of civilization. In the end, I have mixed feelings.

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To start with, I’m not a very good photographer. I have some good pictures, but the camera does most of the work. As an example, here is a picture of a Hornbill in South Africa from my 2018 world cruise:

Note the lack of focus. I was still learning how to use my Canon 80D; the camera comes with 45 auto-focus points and I was helpless with them. Most animals I found while on safari had at least some number of bushes or tree branches between them and me, confusing the camera. In addition, I just didn’t have the reactions to manually focus fast enough to capture the moving animals.

Below is a Roller in Senegal, taken a month later:

In the intervening month I learned how to disable all but a single, central auto-focus point and taught myself to be precise in my aiming. I am particularly happy with how I got the focus set in between all the branches.

My point is my “skill” was finding the right light and right angle/point of view to allow the camera to set it’s own ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed. I found the subject, determined the zoom level, half-pressed the button to set the auto-focus, then full-pressed the button to take the image. Often I took several images to find a “best one” once I was back at my laptop.

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My aurora evening started ominously. My friend Doug lent me his “Arsenal 2” camera AI box as an experiment. My plan was to allow it to determine all my camera settings. But as I was packing my evening camera bag the cable fell out and I stepped on it, breaking the USB connector. Damit.

So, my “Plan B” was to use my camera as I have done for years. However, for auto-focus to work you need something to focus against, and floating, ghostly sky images does not do it. It took about 30 minutes of talking to Professor Internet to realize why my camera wasn’t even registering my button pressing. Kind of frustrating. I was in the mountain camp cafe on my phone searching for how to manually change my camera settings while everyone else was taking pictures. Damit twice.

A side note on northern lights. You don’t see any colors with your eyes. At first I was disappointed, as they appeared just as hazy smudges. I thought it was just wisps of cloud. But they it got giant, with sheets of illumination rippling in the sky. Our guide said it was the best he’d seen in years. And my big, fancy camera was only getting black non-images. Damit three times.

I learned how to set my phone to “Night Vision” mode and at last got some color. But my phone is kind of cheap and does not have an outdoor-rated camera, particularly at night. Each photo required about 5 seconds to complete and I was too frustrated to find a solid base to reduce vibrations. Damit to the fourth power.

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Therefore, here are some of my friend’s images. I have two more evening events coming up to refine my aurora skills.