To capture the aurora with his DSLR (digital single-lens reflex camera), Goodwin says, “It helps to have a wide-angle lens with a wide aperture of f2.8 or bigger. With my 14mm lens, I usually shoot at f2.8, ISO 2000–4000, and shutter speed of 15–25 seconds. With my 24mm, I shoot at f1.8, ISO 2000–4000, and a shutter speed of 8–13 seconds.”
“If the northern lights are particularly strong, you can actually overexpose them,” Goodwin explains, “so I usually experiment with different settings until I get it dialed in.”
“One additional challenge of photographing at night is setting the focus to infinity: Without any light, the auto-focus doesn’t work, so some familiarity with setting the focus on a lens to infinity is helpful for getting sharp images.”
“If you overexpose an aurora, that means you let in so much light that you lose the detail in the different shades of the vibrant colors, and they just become a blob of solid color. For example, the above photos are the same shot of the aurora—the one [on top] is overexposed, and the other is properly exposed. Most photographers would assume that it's so dark at night that you don't have to worry about that, even though we are very mindful to not overexpose an image during the daytime.”