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I was always very keen to see the aurora borealis. However, in pursuit of birds the aurora took a back seat. Finally, the opportunity arose when I received an invitation to the trip (that turned out to be perfectly organized) with the intention of watching the northern lights. Witek, I cordially greet and thank you. I also send my greetings to other companions: to Paweł and Jurek, as together we could not only take pictures but also create a nice atmosphere, with a lot of laugh and positive approach what made favourable climate for this difficult shooting. Especially that taking pictures there was not easy for two, maybe three reasons. The first difficulty was the aurora itself, just because it had to appear at all. But that is not at all certain, even in the far north. Just a little cloudiness would make the entire expedition a failure. Finns say that only a 7-day stay gives a 100% guarantee. Is it the truth or the tourism marketing – nobody knows and it is difficult to assess when it is my first two-day stay in Finland. We had the opportunity to observe aurora on the first and second day, actually at night. On the second day it was definitely more intense, more interesting, more beautiful. The experience gained on the first day helped us to take much better photos on the next day. This was even more important as the night photography has its own rules. The first is focus that has to be adjusted manually. Then check it and do not move. It is not as simple as it seems to be, especially since the tripod was replacing every now and then. And heavy frost made it even more difficult. My headlamp refused to work and it was necessary to replace the battery in the camera. Dozen-degree frost was the second difficulty of this auroral shooting. Well, without warmers and a multi-layered clothing it would be difficult to withstand the cold for several hours. And the worst was the wind... The third problem was the degree of difficulty of the shooting technique itself. Only wide-angle lenses were in play but the aurora sometimes covered so much space that even they could not cope with framing it. Of course, the brighter lenses the better. The aurora does not stand still. This is a dynamic phenomenon. So, with shorter time of exposure it was more likely to take good pictures. To avoid high ISO settings the exposure time had to be a few seconds for the lens 24/1.4 and using the aperture 2. And there another surprise of that night shooting. What we saw in the sky was much weaker in reception than what we saw in the camera view. The long exposure significantly raised the light effects. All in all the final result was not only satisfactory but impressive - we managed to photograph the aurora in the first approach! The intensity of 'our' aurora was estimated at around 60%. When photographing in such circumstances it is impossible not to use a tripod, although it is said that clearly visible aurora can be photographed with hand-hold camera...
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