Sask photographer Scott Aspinall has captured several breathtaking photos of the northern lights and you can too! (Submitted photo: www.scottaspinall.com)

By Teena Monteleone

do it for the 'gram

How to photograph the northern lights with your phone

Oct 7, 2024 | 10:24 PM

It’s considered the Holy Grail of skywatching, and the only thing better than seeing the northern lights in real life is capturing your own mesmerizing photo of the atmospheric phenomenon.

Scott Aspinall is a landscape and nature photographer based in Regina who teaches classes on how to shoot the night sky including the Milky Way and aurora borealis. He says cameras, including those on our phones, have come a long way, so it’s not impossible for even an amateur photographer to capture brilliant images.

“If you’re using a camera or an iPhone, you’ll want to get it off of ‘auto mode’ just because its not going to be able to see at night unless you’re in manual mode,” said Aspinall.

“Then you just increase your shutter speed to the maximum, which is probably 10 seconds, to get as much light as you can. And you may want to max the ISO on your phone. If you’re using a DSLR mirrorless camera, you could start with those same settings…10 seconds and ISO 1600. And make the aperture on your lens as wide open as you can go, if that’s f/2.8 or f/4.”

Aspinall recommends getting far away from city lights to really capture the brilliance of the northern lights. (Submitted photo: www.scottaspinall.com)

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Several sources online also suggest Android users set the white balance to around 3200K, giving the image a more natural look.

Aspinall said the key is to make sure your phone is stable.

“Whether it’s a tripod or you’ve got it leaned up on a table or something, just so there’s no movement to the camera as it’s taking that picture, and then it should pop up a nice, crisp image of what’s out there. So, that’s a good place to start.”

In addition, Aspinall suggests getting outside of the city to an area that’s ‘pretty dark.’

“The light pollution that’s kind of emitted by the city lights and yard lights are going to wash out some of the brightness and the colour, so we need to get outside the city.”

Aspinall said fall is a great time to take photos, but aurora is out all year long. In fact, he compiled a timelapse of all the northern lights and other night sky phenomena, including the 2022 lunar eclipse, that he captured over a three-year period.

“It captures the way the aurora shifts and changes in colour. Time lapsing kind of brings back the life that you witnessed instead of a single image or capture of that movement,” he said.

Here are some general tips for using your phone to take pictures of the northern lights:

Android

• Set camera to pro or manual mode and activate the ‘MF’ icon on your device.
• Turn off the flash.
• ISO, which controls your camera’s light sensitivity, should be set to 1600 and above.
• Set the white balance to around 3200K.
• If the colours of the aurora are bright, your shutter speed should be set to 1-5 seconds. If the lights are slow and dim, set your shutter speed to 20-30 seconds.
• To avoid a blurry photo, keep the camera as still as possible.

iPhone

• Night mode feature turns on automatically when low-light is detected. (on iPhone 11 and later)
• Turn off the flash.
• Access the iPhones hidden menu by tapping the arrow at the top of the screen.
• Use this menu to tap on the night mode icon (looks like a crescent moon with lines) and slide the exposure time to max.
• In the same menu, tap the plus and minus icon to drop the exposure to a negative value. 0.7 is a good place to start but you can play around with it.
• Again, while taking the photo, keep the camera still

  Check out the northern lights @battlefordsNOW reporter Kenneth Cheung captured in @citynb around 10 p.m. Monday. #aurora #northernlights #landofthelivingskies #Saskatchewan pic.twitter.com/6pYt9jNdf0

  — battlefordsNOW (@battlefordsNOW) October 8, 2024

Monday evening may be a perfect night to practice photographing the northern lights. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the aurora forecast is showing a strong probability they will dance over the land of the living skies.

—

teena.monteleone@pattisonmedia.com

On X: princealbertNOW