Northern Lights Camera Settings Calculator
Guides to aurora settings disagree because they describe different skies, cameras and lenses. Tell the calculator what the aurora is doing and what you are shooting with, and it gives you a shutter, ISO and aperture to start from. Those are fitted to your lens's light and your sensor's noise, and held under the point where stars start to trail.
Northern lights camera settings
Say what the aurora is doing and what you are shooting with. You get a shutter, ISO and aperture to start from, the longest exposure before the stars trail, and what to change when the display changes.
- Longest before stars trail, 500 rule
- Van Nieuwenhove's ceiling
- 20 s
- Light against an f/2.8 lens
- White balance
- 3500 K
- File and noise reduction
- RAW, long-exposure NR off
Why these numbers, and what to change
Where the starting points come from
The ranges are Capture the Atlas's, from photographer Dan Zafra. Use an aperture of f/2.8 or the widest your lens has. Set ISO between 3200 and 8000; full-frame bodies can usually go to 5000 to 12,800, and crop-sensor cameras are best kept at 6400 or lower. Under a big, bright moon that lights the landscape, drop to ISO 800 to 3200. The shutter depends on the display:
| What the aurora is doing | Capture the Atlas's shutter | Its example |
|---|---|---|
| Faint and static: weak, not clearly visible to the naked eye | 8 to 12 seconds | 10 s |
| Vibrant: visible to the naked eye, some movement | 3 to 8 seconds | 6 s |
| Very strong: very active and moving fast | 0.5 to 3 seconds, to freeze it and keep the highlights | 0.8 s |
The calculator starts at the example shutter and the low end of the ISO band. For very strong aurora it starts at the highest ISO Capture the Atlas suggests for your sensor, because a sub-second exposure needs all the light it can get. Other photographers start differently. Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove begins at ISO 1600, f/2.8 and 20 seconds, then drops to 5 to 10 seconds when the aurora is moving fast and pushes the ISO up when it is faint. The shared rule is the one Capture the Atlas puts in one line: the stronger, more dynamic and brighter the aurora, the faster the shutter you need.
Take a test shot even if the sky looks empty. NOAA's aurora tutorial notes that modern digital cameras are often more sensitive than the eye and can pick up the aurora, and its colours, when it is too dim for you to see. To the eye, a dim aurora often looks pale white.
Slower lenses, faster lenses
The only arithmetic of our own is exposure. The light a lens lets through goes as one over the f-number squared. So f/4 gathers (2.8 ÷ 4)² = 0.49 of the light of f/2.8, about half, and f/1.8 gathers (2.8 ÷ 1.8)² = 2.4 times as much. The calculator divides the ISO band by that factor. With a slower lens, if the ISO would pass your sensor's top, it lengthens the shutter to make up the difference, but never past the longest shutter for the display or the star limit. If that still is not enough, it tells you how many stops dark the frame will be. A kit zoom at f/4 to f/5.6 can photograph a bright aurora, but on a faint one it will struggle, and that is where a fast wide prime pays off.
Some worked results, from the calculator:
| Camera and lens | Display | Shutter | ISO | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full frame, 14 mm f/2.8 | Clear, slow | 6 s | 3200 | The textbook start |
| Full frame, 14 mm f/2.8 | Fast, dancing | 0.8 s | 12,800 | Full frame's top |
| Full frame, 20 mm f/1.8 | Clear, slow | 6 s | 1250 | 2.4 times the light of f/2.8 |
| APS-C, 11 mm f/2.8 | Fast, dancing | 0.8 s | 6400 | Crop sensor's top |
| APS-C, 18 mm f/4.5 kit zoom | Clear, slow | 8 s | 6400 | Shutter stretched to make up the light |
| APS-C, 50 mm f/1.8 | Faint, still | 6 s | 1250 | Held under the 500 rule's 6.7 s |
| Micro Four Thirds, 12 mm f/5.6 | Fast, dancing | 2.5 s | 6400 | About a tenth of a stop dark |
How long before the stars trail?
The Earth turns once every 23.9345 hours against the stars (NASA's Earth fact sheet), so the sky moves about 15 arcseconds a second. Leave the shutter open long enough and every star becomes a short line. Van Nieuwenhove's advice in his phone guide is plain: don't make exposures longer than 20 seconds, as you will get star trails in your shot due to the planet's rotation. The calculator never goes past that.
Many photographers also use the "500 rule" of thumb: 500 divided by the focal length times the crop factor gives the longest exposure in seconds. That is 36 seconds at 14 mm on full frame, 14 seconds at 24 mm on APS-C (crop 1.5) and 10 seconds at 50 mm on full frame. The crop factors used are 1.5 for Nikon, Sony and Fujifilm APS-C, 1.6 for Canon APS-C and 2 for Micro Four Thirds. It is a rough rule: on a high-resolution sensor viewed at full size, stars can show slight trails before its time runs out. For a wide lens the aurora, not the stars, sets the shutter. The 500 rule only bites with a standard or long lens, and then the calculator holds the shutter under it.
Set these once, before it gets dark
- White balance. Capture the Atlas sets 3500 K. Van Nieuwenhove sets 3500 to 4500 K, because auto white balance tends to throw an orange cast over a night sky.
- RAW. Both shoot RAW, to keep the highlights and shadows for editing.
- Long-exposure noise reduction off. Capture the Atlas turns it off because it slows the camera down between frames, and it removes noise afterwards in software instead.
- Shutter delay. Capture the Atlas uses a 2-second delay on a steady tripod, 5 seconds if it is windy. See the best tripods for aurora.
- Screen brightness down. A bright screen at night makes frames look brighter than they are, so you underexpose.
- Focus by hand. In magnified live view, focus on a bright star or a distant light, then leave the focus ring alone. How to focus on the northern lights at night goes step by step.
- Check each frame. Zoom in on the stars for focus, and check the histogram so the brightest curtains are not clipped.
Cold drains batteries and fingers fast. Keeping camera batteries warm and the best gloves for northern lights photography cover both, and the wind chill calculator shows how long bare fingers can be out. The whole night's workflow, from tripod to composition, is in aurora photography for beginners. Northern lights camera settings explained and phone settings for iPhone and Android go deeper into the settings, and the best lenses for northern lights photography is the place to start if you are choosing glass. To pick a night worth shooting, the aurora visibility tool gives the Kp you need where you are.
Starting points, not rules: every camera's clean ISO is different and every display changes by the minute. Check each frame and adjust.
Sources: Capture the Atlas, How to Photograph Northern Lights: Best Settings and Tips; Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove, How to Photograph the Northern Lights and with an iPhone; NOAA SWPC, Aurora Tutorial; NASA, Earth Fact Sheet.