Beginner Iceland camera settings

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Afternoon
am going to Iceland for a long weekend I don't do landscapes very often so just wanted to check that I've got the right idea
we are going on the golden circle tour which should include snow scenes geysers and waterfalls and may get lucky at night with the northern lights

for snow I'm guessing to expose about a stop over but will bracket?

for the geyser I'm thinking to freeze the motion I'm thinking of a shutter speed of about 250 ?

I'm ok with waterfalls I've done loads of those

for the Northern lights im thinking that light will be low and ill be on F2.8 iso 800 and a speed of about two seconds?

I will be taking 11-16 , 17-50 f2.8 lenses and also 70-200 on 7d and 550d

I'm hoping to be able to backlight the geyser shoot into the sun , think it would light up nicely if we get some sun
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Sounds about right to me. You've not specified shooting raw, but that would be a help regarding any tricky snow exposures. I've found in the past that I've needed a bit more than 1 stop, but as usual, it's all light dependent.

I've just lined up a long weekend in March myself, similar to yours, can't wait!
 
Thanks Ben that's brilliant
I will bracket the snow scene's anyway
will post back how I get on
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I would think to get the northern lights you would need more like ISO 1600 25secs. I'm off there myself in May I can't wait!
 
Thanks Andrew I was worried about movement of the northern lights on a longer exposure but I'm not sure as I haven't seen them before
I guess I need to get the shutter speed as low as I can, and will go to f2.8 and as you suggest iso 1600
 
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This is something I'd love to do at some time. There are various help/guides on line such as this one...

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/82...hy-a-guide-to-capturing-the-northern-lights/2

They seem to be saying that you should use the highest ISO which gives acceptable quality and that you should aim to keep the exposure as short as possible. The guy writing this article says 4 to 15 seconds.

This guys says 30 seconds to one minute, but he's using a "relatively low ISO"...

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/techniques/aurora-md.shtml

Anyway, there are loads of guides and examples on line.
 
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Thanks very much Alan I did look on the net but the information seems to be a bit varied for the shutter speed / exposure time
as short as possible makes sense
 
Two secs will be seriously underexposed for the northern lights.
Try around 20 secs @iso 1600 and check histogram then adjust as necessary.
Remember to manually focus at infinity too as autofocus will hunt in the dark.
 
Thanks Marie will do
good point about checking the histogram sounds like I will be exposing to the right I do that anyway for my zoo and wildlife stuff that I normally do
hopefully I will get time to try a few exposures
, I was wondering about how to focus
will probably put the camera on live view then zoom in and manually focus
 
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Also you want the shortest shutter speed you can get away with to capture curtains of light rather than a green glow, so as fast a lens as you have, the highest iso your camera can use with acceptable results to keep the shutter speed a short as possible. It's the usual case of trading one thing against another, and best of luck with the weather as well.
 
Yes focus on the stars or some other distant light before shooting.
If you could beg steal or borrow an F1.4 lens then you'd capture good aurora in 6-8 seconds as its 2 stops faster than your F2.8.
Also don't do in camera noise reduction as you will miss out on precious shooting time, do your noise reduction in pp.
 
I would say focus on the stars as unless the aurora is very strong you will not be able to focus on it as it's a bit vague to the eye and ever changing.

Thanks Andy good idea
Also you want the shortest shutter speed you can get away with to capture curtains of light rather than a green glow, so as fast a lens as you have, the highest iso your camera can use with acceptable results to keep the shutter speed a short as possible. It's the usual case of trading one thing against another, and best of luck with the weather as well.

Thanks again I will probably use my Tokina 11-16 F2.8
Will use ISO 1600 that's normally ok on my 7d I wouldn't want to go higher though

Yes focus on the stars or some other distant light before shooting.
If you could beg steal or borrow an F1.4 lens then you'd capture good aurora in 6-8 seconds as its 2 stops faster than your F2.8.
Also don't do in camera noise reduction as you will miss out on precious shooting time, do your noise reduction in pp.

Thanks Marie , I have got a 50mm 1.8 but that's probably not wide enough if I had time I could have rented one but am going soon never mind
I have never used in camera noise reduction normally use Lightroom
 
This is where the advantages of digital should really help as you can shoot and review the results immediately and try different settings.

If I get to do this sort of trip it'll almost certainly be a once or maybe twice in a lifetime thing and of course there's no guarantee of good weather and the lights so if everything comes together I'd be shooting as many shots as possible at different settings and thanking God that I didn't have to reload after 36 frames and hope that I'd captured the images I wanted :D
 
This is where the advantages of digital should really help as you can shoot and review the results immediately and try different settings.

If I get to do this sort of trip it'll almost certainly be a once or maybe twice in a lifetime thing and of course there's no guarantee of good weather and the lights so if everything comes together I'd be shooting as many shots as possible at different settings and thanking God that I didn't have to reload after 36 frames and hope that I'd captured the images I wanted :D

Oh definitely will be taking lots of shots
will be using AV mode and varying the exposure compensation
:)
 
Thanks everyone for the help
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I'll definitely report back how I get on
am really looking forward to going
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Was out there over new years. With a tokina 11-16 funnily enough.

Check that yours actually focusses to infinity. Mine doesn't and I need to get it fixed!
F2.8
ISO 800
5seconds

Northern Lights by mike.redgrave, on Flickr
 
Was out there over new years. With a tokina 11-16 funnily enough.

Check that yours actually focusses to infinity. Mine doesn't and I need to get it fixed!
F2.8
ISO 800
5seconds

Northern Lights by mike.redgrave, on Flickr

Really nice shot Mike I would be over the moon to see that
good point about the focusing to infinity pretty sure mine is ok but am also bringing my tamron 17-50
I hope you got your lens fixed ok
 
Was out there over new years. With a tokina 11-16 funnily enough.

Check that yours actually focusses to infinity. Mine doesn't and I need to get it fixed!
F2.8
ISO 800
5seconds

Have just sent mine back to have autofocus fixed- can I ask how you found the infinity focus was off??
 
Saw a thread on here about it and put that photo up. That's manually focussed to 'infinity' and you can see that it's not! Not my eyes either, others thought the same. It is, admittedly a challenging photo, relatively high ISO, wide open, and nothing right in the centre with sharp edges! I'll try and get a couple of daylight shots at infinity too.

May I ask who you bought it from and if you're getting it fixed under warranty?

https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/t...nfinity-diy-or-send-away.573993/#post-6667619
 
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Morning:)
unfortunately we didn't get the weather that we hoped for, it was cloudy misty and wet , we didn't see any sun at all Visibility was poor so we couldn't photograph snow scenes or the northern lights
we did see the geyser which was amazing and the waterfalls
we still enjoyed ourselves and will definitely be going back:)
 
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Sorry to hear you dipped out a bit with the weather, Pete. Here's hoping we have better luck in a month or so. If not, we'll just have to go back and try again!
 
Weather is always the great unknown when travelling north. We did get some sunshine on our last trip but only half an hour of clear sky after dark so struggled with the aurora images. Better luck next time Pete.
 
Thanks Nod and Andy still enjoyed ourselves and definitely going back

:):)
 
Sorry to hear you dipped out a bit with the weather, Pete. Here's hoping we have better luck in a month or so. If not, we'll just have to go back and try again!

Good luck on your trip hopefully the weather will be good
it's a great place and everyone is so friendly
 
We were out from the 28th December to the 3rd Jan, cloudy all the time until we got out new years day and were fortunate enough to see them again on the 2nd, our last night. It really is pot luck!
 
We were out from the 28th December to the 3rd Jan, cloudy all the time until we got out new years day and were fortunate enough to see them again on the 2nd, our last night. It really is pot luck!

Glad you saw them guess the thing is do is go for longer we went for three days probably not long enough
 
Saw a thread on here about it and put that photo up. That's manually focussed to 'infinity' and you can see that it's not! Not my eyes either, others thought the same. It is, admittedly a challenging photo, relatively high ISO, wide open, and nothing right in the centre with sharp edges! I'll try and get a couple of daylight shots at infinity too.

May I ask who you bought it from and if you're getting it fixed under warranty?

https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/t...nfinity-diy-or-send-away.573993/#post-6667619

Sorry Mike just saw this. I bought it from HDEW cameras and had the 2nd one they sent me looked at by the official Tokina dealer(?) In Holland . They found no fault apparently so I'm resigned to using it manually, although I'm worried that it could have the same problem as yours now! How do you check for it?
 
Stop it down a bit, focus to 'infinity' and take some pictures of things very far away!
 
Too late for you now, Pete but while we were there, I reckon I ran through pretty much all the options available, from wide open and long exposures to stopped right down at a high SS! IIRC, for the Aurora, I was using ISO 1600 (could have been 3200), f/4 and 2-3 seconds.
 
Too late for you now, Pete but while we were there, I reckon I ran through pretty much all the options available, from wide open and long exposures to stopped right down at a high SS! IIRC, for the Aurora, I was using ISO 1600 (could have been 3200), f/4 and 2-3 seconds.

The thing with those settings Nod is the aurora we had was quite exceptional and on a more normal night you would probably use a longer shutter time or one of the other parameters altered to suit. We were spoilt you know. :banana::D
 
Very much so! I only shot the early show but Jax stayed out in the hotel car park a bit later and was using my X-30 compact. Set to all the 2s - f/2, 2seconds at ISO 2000. Caught the curtains while I only got the streaks across the whole sky. She also caught more colours than I did - I just got the greens but she caught some pink/purple as well. Kept seeing it through to about 3:30, at which point I closed the curtains to allow me some sleep! Looking forward to going back at some point, hopefully with some better weather!
 
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