Hi all. I'm off up to Norway tomorrow with my F3 to shoot the Northern Lights. I'll be keeping a video diary with the F3 and shooting the Aurora in the evenings with both the F3 for real-time Aurora footage and DSLR's for time-lapse. I'm going to feed near live still frames to my web site as well as daily updates and blogs. The forecast is promising with a mix of clear skies and scattered cloud as well as good solar activity. The blog page is here: Northern Lights Live 2012 | XDCAM-USER.COM (http://www.xdcam-user.com/northern-lights-live-2012/)

Have a good trip. We're all looking forward to what you might get!

Hope the weather and the lights are kind/make up for some of the frustrations I know you've had in the past.... and have fun!

At the airport, on my way. Forecast for both Aurora's and weather looking promising. Tonight should be clear in Tromso.

Large solar flare just erupted and headed this way so could be spectacular tomorrow night.

NASA - Long Duration M3.2 Class Solar Flare and CME (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News011912-M3.2flare-cme.html)

Have some great Aurora footage in the can. The F3 is exceeding my expectations at night, capturing the Aurora in real time. Once I get home I'll be posting clips and footage.

Great news. There have been a lot of reports of the aurora being visible in the northern UK because of the Sun doing its stuff with CME activity the last few days. It's claimed that over the last few days/right now, assuming its not cloudy and raining, have been/are some of the best conditions in the last 6 years for the aurora - might not be for communications satellites that might get knocked out!

I'm not trying to hijack the thread, I just have a question about the F3 vs. EX-1R for shooting Northern Lights.

Alister, how do you find the noise levels with the F3 when shooting the Aurora?

I've spend the last few nights shooting the Aurora with an EX-1R and am extremely disappointed with the level of noise in the image. Especially when in SLS mode. I've even tried with the gain set at -3db. Is the F3 considerably cleaner?


Craig.

Hi Craig. The F3 is different to the EX's. The F3 is more sensitive, with less noise but does not have a slow shutter slower than 8 frames. If you have S-Log with +18db of gain the F3 is as sensitive as the EX1 with +18db gain and 16 frame slow shutter. The F3 has less noise.

The video below is one I am really proud of. It is real time footage of the Aurora as opposed to the normal time-lapse you usually see. So the motion of the Aurora is as fast as it actually was. The colours are also as seen by the naked eye.

It is quite low quality H264 as I am still in the Arctic and internet is very limited. I will upload a higher quality version when I get home on the 3rd of Feb. The original does not have the banding artefacts. I have treated the video using neat video to reduce the noise. It was shot using a 2 frame slow shutter and a 20mm f1.8 sigma lens.

Dance of the Spirits. Real Time Aurora footage. on Vimeo

Wow, that is awesome! I really like the juxtaposition of the house.

Did you shoot this in S-log? To internal cards?

Thanks.

Hi Alister,
Amazing images.
Were you star tracking or is there an excited pixel, dead center in your image? Seems to be in all angles.
Perhaps it's just in the QT.

It's a spoiler to try and stop people stealing my video.

Smart move with the spoiler... How much are you pushing those in post Alister?? or is it as it comes out of the f3? you said you corrected a few noise that got in, but was that it? are you at +18db there? and in terms of time, how much does it take for each cut?? i've never seen the aurora in anything else than video or photos, so i wonder how fast it really moves in real life

Truly excellent, Alister.

I've wanted to see Northern lights all my life.
This is the closest I've gotten so far. Thanks Alister.
Did you shoot any on 3D?

There is almost zero pushing in post. I think I applied about a 10% luma lift and then a Neat Video noise reduction pass. It's not terrible without the Neat Video pass and for many uses I would possibly not bother with the Neat Video pass, but for the web and highly compressed H264 it helps it along a bit. The uploaded file was only about 150MB to fit with the near dial-up speed connection I have here in this very remote part of Norway.

When I get home I will put together a higher quality version with some more clips. I got almost 3 hours of footage from January 24th, so I have lots more to show!

I used S-Log with +18db gain and a 2 frame slow shutter, recording onto both the SxS cards and a Samurai. The video is real time, it is NOT time-lapse. That is how the Aurora can move, that is what we saw with our own eyes. The F3 far exceeds the EX1 in terms of low light performance and noise, but you do need a fast lens and fast wide angles are not all that common. I'd really like a f1.4 16mm or something similar for my next Aurora trips.

Thanks Alister. Did you notice more noise on the Samurai files than the native sxs?

Alister,
Fantastic work.
I just came off two straight weeks of work and will continue all this week with a 3 camera gig, all F3's,
cracked a bottle of wine and clicked on your efforts from the great north. You're work is truly inspirational for the rest of us.
Thank you for sharing.
S Log at +18. The graded originals must be stellar.

Thanks for sharing this, Alister.

In the past, I've only seen time-lapse footage of the Aurora Borealis and while that footage of the quickly streaming ribbons of light was spectacular, I've always wondered what it really looks like in person. Thanks to you (and the F3), now I know. This is far more impressive than time lapse. With your footage, one really gets a sense of the true movement and three-dimensional nature of the phenomena. Well done.

Incredible! Can't wait ti see some finished clips.

It's going to take me a while to finish the final short film. As well as the incredible 3 hours of real-time aurora footage from the F3 (which is my favourite part of what I shot). I also have 4 hours of 4K time-lapse shot with DSLR's much of which was done with a motion control head, the colours captured in the 10 second exposures are incredible, lots of deep reds and purples. About an hour of 3D time-lapse plus some nice back story including snow scootering up into the mountains, ice fishing and a traditional Sami (the local people) meal in a Lavvu (tipi) to celebrate the trips success. All I need to do now is get all this material home safely. The meal in the tent came out very well. The only light from the open fire, with glowing embers shooting up through the opening in the top of the Lavvu. I love my F3.

1920x1080 version now up on youtube. I've added a few more clips too!

Dance of The Sprits, Full HD, real-time Aurora Footage from Solar Storm of Jan 24 - YouTube

The meal in the tent came out very well.

I honestly started to wonder if you had chosen to give us an ounce more detail than we really needed with that sentence... oh so very immature but worth an LOL

Seriously though, it's astounding what nature can do including whatever gave you the urge to get yourself all the way up there to capture it so wonderfully for us all. Will this be for broadcast or independent release?

Either way, thanks for the amazing sneak peeks and I hope we get to see the final piece someday.

Cheers,
Dave.

The finished short might be shown at NAB, I'll keep you posted on that.

The reason for shooting it is primarily for stock footage, but given that I think I did get something rather special who knows. Maybe a short doc for the festival circuits or a filler for TV.

I've uploaded some stills from some of the other non-aurora stuff that I shot.

looks like you got great weather. Fantastic!

I've uploaded a longer version to both Youtube and Vimeo. The Youtube version was uploaded at 1920x1080, 20Mbps, so if you have a fast connection looks great:

Night of Wonders - Northern Lights expedition, 24th January 2012 - YouTube (http://youtu.be/6PtmmD7VUPg)

Plus there is the vimeo version:

Night of Wonders on Vimeo