Storm approaching

                    Apr 02          Apr 03     Apr 04
  
00-03UT        2                   4                  3
03-06UT        1                   5 (G1)         3
06-09UT        0                   4                  3
09-12UT        1                   3                  2
12-15UT        3                   3                  1
15-18UT       5 (G1)           2                  1
18-21UT       5 (G1)           2                  1
21-00UT       6 (G2)           3                  1 

Saturday 2 April 2016, above at 6.45 pm.  Looking out  it was still sunny but more cloud coming in .

                                                                                                     It's starting

I set off at 8.15 pm and caught the last part of the sunset at Bigton. The cloud was coming in from the south and east but I was hopeful that the aurora would appear before total cover. A few stars started to appear about 9.00 pm then a brief pillar of green light 10 mins later.

By 9.30 pm it was just about dark enough, that's the only draw back being in Shetland, its getting lighter every night. The aurora soon appeared, a growing green band that started to become brighter with dancing curtains. The band began to get wider and soon purple appeared, occasionally large wide shooting bands of  colour. Then a large amount of red / orange to the east of the green band.

At one point the coast guard helicopter came past heading north to check out a strange light from Easter Quarff, not the aurora.

All along the cloud kept creeping in from the south and east. At least no moon was visible and it was still but very cold. Around 10.15 it started to fade, but back over on the east side of Shetland it was total cloud cover.

It was one of the most colourful aurora's I have seen, and at KP 6 nearly one of the biggest. Glad I made it out as the Sunday night was very wet & misty , although just visible from Sumburgh.

This time Shetland was lucky with the cloud cover, Scotland had to endure total cloud on the night. I thought it may be one of the last Aurora until it starts going dark in September, another good month for Aurora hunting. Personally I cannot get enough of them, everyone is unique, and since moving to Shetland 2 years ago we have seen around 24 aurora's , with one in Sheffield back in February 2014.

On the 7 April another big aurora occurred at KP6, but this time due to cloud cover in Sandwick, it  didn't reveal its self until we were just about to go to bed, so we decided to look out through the window. This looked great, with a large green curtain rippling across the sky easily visible to the naked eye

Samyang 14 mm lens

Shetland has wide open skies that are just waiting to be photographed either day or night. One thing you want to do is have the biggest view and you can only do this with a full frame camera.

For sometime I have been saving for and have just bought the Nikon D610 with a 14 mm Samyang Lens.







By doing this I also had to update from Lightroom 4 to 6 as the camera wasn't recognized in the old software.

                                                                                                           St Ninian's Isle

For many years I have used a cropped DX Nikon camera with the Tokina 11-16 mm wide angle lens which has been very good. There has always been something missing, a wider view either to capture the Milky way or a dramatic sky.

                                                                                                                Lerwick Museum

I had read many reviews on the Samyang 14mm lens, its the same lens as the Rokinon, Vivitar and Opticka 14mm. For the money it has had some top reviews but some have said you have to watch out for soft edges.

                                                                                                                        Mareel

The lens arrived and I was soon out undertaking test shots and instantly you could see very soft corners, which was nearly blurred. I sent this back and ask if others they had were from the same batch, they said not so asked for a replacement which came quick. Exactly the same problem occurred on the second lens, so this went back. I received excellent service from the seller not his problem, the lenses were below par.

I then move onto Amazon with a high turnover on lenses. This came in a different box, sealed with a 5 year guarantee so i was optimistic. Straight away it appeared sharp on the rear screen, so I did more test shots even though the weather wasn't great and downloaded them to find the corners were actually alot better, so third time lucky.

I was out that night hoping for an aurora or stars but neither appeared so I had to make do with some low light photos near the harbour. I was very impressed , it was very sharp at f/5.6 to f/8 and easy to find the focus (manual) with the chip (AE) in the Nikon version. (Canon have just released an AE version)

I didn't find flare a problem like some and it revealed pleasing colours and contrast. It covers around 115 degrees, so you get lots in . Then a better clear night arrived and I was out photographing the aurora and stars- you can see more examples on my last blog. I will also be looking at taking more landscapes with this lens

You have to get used to being close to objects, its all about getting to grips with the enormous field of view. I work alot with an 800 mm lens doing wildlife photos (shetlandsfp.blogspot.co.uk) so the field of view is about 2 degrees - some difference.

                    One of the first ones received but was very soft in the corners at f/8 - this bottom left

I decided to get the new filter holder for the Samyang 14mm lens, mine from Slovenia. It arrived quickly well packed and for 10euro it was an excellent find. Most in the UK come in around £27. One thing though, it is massive.

You have to fit an attachment over the lens hood, then attach the filter holder from the back of the lens, which I am not too keen on doing as it means you have to detach the lens allowing possible dust into the camera.

Another issue might be the wind, here in Shetland it can always be a problem, and with a massive hood it is going to collect alot of wind and could become unstable even if using a tripod, more later.

The other day we went to a very interesting talk on the moon, given by Mike Briemann and his wife Anna. Rather than delivering it the conventional way Mike brought a number of models made on his 3D printer together with video and slides, it worked very well

                                          A landscape photo at Nibon with the 14 mm Samyang lens

Activity again

Its been a great week in Shetland and the rest of Scotland for seeing the Aurora. Judging by the number of photos I have seen on Facebook a good part of the population has been out taking photos. The weather has played a part with a run of three excellent nights, clear, still and reasonably warm.

                                                                               St Ninians Looking north to Bigton & Ireland

The only draw back was a half moon, although there was some benefit as it tended to light the foreground.

Although we have been  restricted with the times we could go out, due to concerts, it is still great to be outside any night. Tuesday night we managed an hour out at St Ninian's, but the main activity seemed to be after midnight.

Wednesday we got out slightly earlier due to a shorter concert but the largest activity was about 1/2 hour before we started photographing down at Mareel, it was already fading when we started. The forecast had been for the greatest activity to be between 9-12 midnight, you just need to have the time to be out ready. On the way back from Lerwick we did see one burst of very bright activity as we passed Sound.

                                                                                                       Looking north from St Ninian's

The KP level had been 5 on Tuesday and Wednesday, but in Shetland people didn't seem to capture the colour as further south on mainland Scotland. March and September are the best months for seeing the aurora here as the earth tilts towards the sun providing the biggest contact with any solar flare.

With several alerts during the day with a KP 5+ you always want night to come sooner, but the nights in Shetland are drawing out quickly so it becomes darker later and will not be helped by the change, on Saturday 26 March when the clocks go forward.

The Aurora  is possibly the main item on a person's bucket list, it was on mine but even though we have seen it more than two dozen times since we moved here back in 2014 we never fail to be impressed.

                                                               Lerwick - Aurora still visible even with light Pollution

Don't forget tonight is Earth Hour a global event when people turn off their lights for an hour between 8.30- 9.30 pm. This is to show that we care about the future of our planet. Now 172 countries are taking part. It first started back in 2007 in Sydney Australia and is expanding all the time

Opportunity missed

What can you do when you have guests and you find out that a massive 6.7 kp aurora is taking place outside.

Well not alot until they leave, but peaking outside you could see some activity behind the clouds.

This is the first time I have seen the aurora over a light polluted area. It was so bright green but i missed the colours which had taken place earlier that evening. Not the best aurora I have photographed but never the less still spectacular

 I couldn't really jump in the car and head out but I did go to the bottom of the road and looked out west

 Cloud was coming over and eventually the aurora was lost behind the grey mass. Further south in Scotland a great display took place, many colours visible. Many nights we miss out when a massive aurora takes place as we have cloud cover

The best time and the biggest auroras for us in the UK, tend to take place either in March or September when the earth is turned towards the sun

The following night I was out and only found a weak aurora , just a thin green band across the northern sky, still great to see

Star trails

The lack of posts have been down to the weather, we have had a lot of gales and the other week Storm Gertrude hit with 120 mph winds. In addition to that it has been very cold, most of the time hovering around freezing both day and night, so night driving has been an issue with icy roads.

Any way I did  get out to do a bit of star trail photography down the road in Sandwick next to the beach. It was dark with no moon so I set the wide angle lens up on the Nikon D7000 and left it running at 30 second intervals for an hour at ISO 800 looking out over a couple of boats.

                                                                                Sumburgh with Iridium Flares

After I also took 15 dark frames to reduce the noise. Its no good using noise reduction in the camera as the camera would be unusable for another 30 seconds after the photo was taken so would produce large gaps in the star trail. Ideally it should be at the same temperature so a dark frame subtraction would  be better to use but I have found it better to take dark frames after the session.

                                                                                                  Sandsayre Normal mode

The last couple of days have produced weak auroras but these have been in the very early hours  when I have been asleep. I have been out in the day and now have found a couple of locations I would like to take either star trails or aurora photos, its always nice to have something in the foreground.

                                                                                                       Comet Mode

Focus issues still confuse people, even after explaining it a few times. Something I will be covering again in the next intermediate photography course next month which is now fully booked.

I finally after a lot of saving and debating, purchased a Nikon D610 (full frame) and a Samyang 14 mm lens. These have both been highly recommended for astrophotography, although in some cases the lens produces some very soft corners so I will be testing this out very soon.

                                                                                                     Aurora down at Sandsayre

What a night

It seemed quiet fitting that having just delivered an astrophotography training session to my intermediate photography group in Lerwick , the conditions for astrophotography that night was just perfect.

After a few very cold night with lots of ice about, Monday finally warmed up and it promised a reasonably clear night/ Monday was of course the night for the Geminid Meteor shower so I kept locally and headed down to the coast a short distance away with good all round views.

At 7.00 pm I pulled up and instantly saw the aurora, it was too much of a temptation so I brought out two cameras and mounted them on  tripods. The 18-200mm lens pointing out to the aurora which continued to develop, the second with a 11-16 mm lens pointing towards the sky.

For the second time in a couple of nights it started to rain, but this was brief thankfully, the clouds clearing. The brightness of the aurora began to change and curtains of green waved across the sky , shafts of green reaching high into the sky and also below.

As usual the lights from Cunningsburgh caused light pollution and made the clouds orange but I think this added to the photos. This aurora was the second best I have seen this year, but this one had little other colour than green visible. This wasn't the case further north and west where purple banding and shafts of light could be seen in Unst and Walls

The Aurora can last several hours or a few minutes, this one was visible throughout the three hours I was out. At nearly 10 pm it started to fade, but others saw it well past midnight. I could have well missed the whole events had it not been for the meteor shower which I intended to photograph.

Using multi shooting at 25 seconds I captured many frames but only two with meteor trails, I did however see dozens, some very bright. Most tended to be short in length, but a couple very long trails came through very bright.

Its difficult capturing meteors even with a wide angle lens, even pointing to the source did not really help and looking at what happened last night I will in future point the lens away from the centre. At over 100 per hour the Geminid Meteor shower is the best chance to capture one or more of these beauties.

Normally I am down at this spot by myself but on this occasion several other people including photographer took the opportunity of a still moonless night to see the spectacle. It was good to get out at last but the forecast for the next 10 days looks poor with gales and rain returning so this may be the last chance to get out for some night photography

It was good to see a few of the photography group managed to get some Aurora photos of their own. If you want to come on an Adult learning course either beginners - know your own camera or intermediate course ( 3 different 6 week courses) covering a wide range of photography, then contact Shetland Adult Education in Lerwick . Note the January 2016 Intermediate course is full, only a few left on the Intermediate course commencing end of February. A new beginners course starts in April