going to see the northern lights and need a decent camera

danbim

as the title says,i wont to be able to take decent photos if im lucky enough to see the lights , dont have a massice budget around £150- £200 , so looking for some recomendations, will be using the camera after for general use ,ie family holidays etc.Would like it to fit in a bag if poss but not essential ,thanks in advance

WhiteChristmas

In this price bracket, you get most bang for your buck from Fuji.

Finepix S4500 is their current top entry-level bridge camera and, paired with a decent tripod, will do the job admirably. If you can wait a couple of months, there's an upgrade due (the S4800), but it's only a slight improvement on paper, so I'd be tempted to go ahead and buy now.

Runs off double-A's, so you won't find yourself in the Arctic Circle trying to find a specialist shop because your batteries have died in the cold.

Don't buy a £10 tripod, but there's no need to go mad, either. A Hama Star 62 will serve your purpose perfectly adequately without taking up half of your luggage allowance.

Whatever you get, it's important to spend some time with the camera before you go to use it in anger. Get to know it and rattle off a few hundred shots to test it.

Have a great trip. I am very jealous.

danbim

thank you both for your replies , i was hoping to get one that i can charge the batteries through laptop or plug point(not sure what thats called)


oh and just to add the trip was a win from MSE so mega excited , and thanks again

Lifeforms

You can buy rechargeable battery cameras, but you'd still need to get an additional battery to make sure you will always have power. The cold could affect battery power, so even if you went AAA/AA's or rechargeable, then you should take extra with you.

I'm favouring the Panasonic Lumix super zoom cameras currently. Lovely to use, fairly easy, with some good user modes, and the zoom on it is really nice, even when it kicks into the digital zoom.

Compact, but not tiny compact, and not as big as a dslr, or bridge camera, but some of the results can be as good. Always keep it in my bag.

I'd say decide whether you want something like a dslr, bridge camera, or you want to go for a compact camera, then decide whether you want things like a super zoom camera. It's not much use if you're stood close to where you would normally take pictures, like kids in a park, or family portrait etc, but if you do like long distance photography, then quite useful.

My model is old now, but it's the Lumix TZ18 if you want to check out compacts.

gjchester

danbim wrote: »

as the title says,i wont to be able to take decent photos if im lucky enough to see the lights , dont have a massice budget around £150- £200 , so looking for some recomendations, will be using the camera after for general use ,ie family holidays etc.Would like it to fit in a bag if poss but not essential ,thanks in advance

Forget it in your budget.

We went earlier in the year and the light levels mean even my expensive SLR and lens had issues. It was -17 where we were so you will need a spare battery to swap in, cold kills batteries and you'll need a spare to keep warm in a pocket ready for when you need it.

If you want to try you'll need something to put the camera on, maybe a tripod, a gorillapod, or a beanbag pod and a remote shutter release or a self timer, otherwise the shake you create when pressing the shutter will affect the image, however most of my images are relatively short (1/8th of a second) as too long as you'll just get a green streak of light, why a green streak, well for some reason they tend to come out that way on cameras, all of out party's cameras came out green even though they had yellow a red in them.

The really dramatic northern lights effect appear out of nowhere, last seconds, (especially the dancing ribbon effects) and vanish. Unless you really in to taking photos and already have the kit , do yourself a favour buy a postcard, and sit back, relax and enjoy them for the few seconds they last.

Enjoy the trip...

agrinnall

gjchester wrote: »

... do yourself a favour buy a postcard, and sit back, relax and enjoy them for the few seconds they last.

.

Are they Mission Impossible postcards that self destruct?

I agree with your summary of the situation, it's true of lots of things in the natural world that buying a few photos taken by a professional using the best kit who has waited for days/weeks/months for the ideal shot is very often a better option than trying yourself with underpowered gear and ending up disappointed.

buglawton

it's nice to make your 'own' souvenir. Any digi camera will get a half decent Lights pic if it is on a tripod and the correct 'scene' mode, often labelled as 'night time with tripod' is selected. It will expose for a couple of seconds.

Northern Lights seem to have 2 modes - large but rather faint and hard to photograph bands that stay present for hours, and then much brighter and moving 'curtains' that will photograph ok.

Don't give up too early if you see nothing much on a clear night - the Lights may come out to play at 2 or 3 in the morning!

gjchester

buglawton wrote: »

it's nice to make your 'own' souvenir. Any digi camera will get a half decent Lights pic if it is on a tripod and the correct 'scene' mode, often labelled as 'night time with tripod' is selected. It will expose for a couple of seconds.

Alas if only it was that simple.

The issue is a what seems bright to us is not to a camera, the eye is a million times better than any camera, seeing in almost total dark and adjusting all the time to the conditions. Long exposure's mean the subject needs to stay still, great for the large faint bands, but useless for the moving bands.

The moving bands are almost impossible to catch with out expensive kit that can really do low light. They were out for maybe a minutes when we saw them but they were constantly moving. If you did managed to catch them they'd just appear as a brightened sky as they keep moving.

Go look on Flickr, you can search on Northern Lights, most images are the large band type taken on expensive SLR's with 15 to 30 second exposures. You can get short exposure time, but then you really need to push up the ISO sensitivity, and that will mean noise speckles on the images, and generally point and shoots don't give you the controls you need.

You really would have to be VERY VERY lucky to get them with a point and shoot in either mode, point and shoots are not designed for long exposures.

By all means try, but don't rely on a P&S for night time shots they just can't do it, they don't have large lenses that catch the amount of light that is needed an a given timeframe.

buglawton

At around £200 there should be some top end of the compact camera range available that offer up to 400 ISO. This should do decent tripod pics on a bright Northern Lights display. Next up come the Bridge cameras. I am pretty sure some photo forums will have pics posted from high end compacts.

gjchester

buglawton wrote: »

At around £200 there should be some top end of the compact camera range available that offer up to 400 ISO. This should do decent tripod pics on a bright Northern Lights display. Next up come the Bridge cameras. I am pretty sure some photo forums will have pics posted from high end compacts.

Point & shoots are optimised to be small and simple, taking great shots in most conditions, but they are not very good at extremes.

Look here - http://s208.photobucket.com/user/iknow_05/media/northernli1.jpg.html?sort=3&o=10

That about as good as you'll get with a P&S, the light levels will be low so the camera will compensate by extending the exposure length (many won't do more than 15 seconds too), many P&S don't have a focus assist light and rely on contract focussing may not even be able to focus at night (they usually set a fixed focus if they can't detect the focus). P&S will generally give a blurred effect of the lights as the trails move over the exposure time.

Your right pushing the ISO will help but generally speaking P&S's have small lens and don't gather a lot of light. There's a good article here too
http://www.alaskaphotographyblog.com/how-to-photograph-the-northern-lights-with-a-digital-camera/

It's not impossible, it can be done with time patience and understanding the modes of you camera, but the OP wanted a small compact camera in the sub £200 bracket, and in that bracket it's unlikely be sensitive enough to light and have the features needed to get decent shots of the northern lights.

The lights can appear and disappear in seconds, you either have to spend a few nights out waiting especially for them to appear with the camera all set up and ready in the right mode and on a tripod and focussed, or you'll try and take photos of them in a rush and in the process miss the beauty of them.

isofa

Dump the idea of a compact, and have a look for a good second hand DSLR, as you won't be able to get anything decent new for that money.

Unfortunately most of the prosumer DSLRS up to £800 only use a smaller sensor, but still they way better than a compact. You should be able to find a decent old 30D or even 40D on eBay within your budget - a superb camera, one I keep as a backup to my 5DII.

400 ISO will not cut the mustard at all, and on a compact it won't be very sharp. A decent older DSLR will offer a good image at iso 1600, and modern full frames (1-2K offer amazing images at 3200). So you should get some keepers, if you get to see the lights...

I took a set of shots in the Indian Ocean with a bridge camera (powershot G11), and they are ok, but nothing like the quality of those from my pro gear. However I didn't want to travel to a humid climate with 4 grands worth of camera and lens!