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I visited Sweden at the end December 2019/beginning of January 2020 with the intention of seeing the Northern Lights. A little bit about my trip… I chose Sweden as my aurora viewing destination for a few reasons. The first being I had never visited before and this would be somewhere new. Additionally, when deciding between the Scandinavian countries, I found that Abisko, Sweden had the best microclimate for viewing the northern lights. I was super interested in taking pictures of the northern lights but I did not own a DSLR camera and I didn’t have much time to learn as I booked the trip about a month in advance. This made one of my main questions before planning this trip what are the best northern lights camera settings?

I ended up joining a tour group while I was in northern Sweden called Lights over Lapland. Lights over Lapland provides DSLR cameras for you to borrow and a guide to teach you how to use them. And fortunately, they have perfected northern lights camera settings over time. Lights over Lapland has single night tour options as well as 4 day all-inclusive tours that cover your food, hotel stay, and some additional daytime excursions. Since I was solo traveling, I opted for the 4 day tour to have some of the extra details taken care of. You can learn more about my trip to Sweden here.

Pro tip: Interested in capturing the northern lights with your phone instead, check out this post here.

Northern Lights Camera Settings

Here is a picture of the camera settings that we used to capture the northern lights. There were a few adjustments made depending on the day. The exposure was increased from 15 up to as high as 30 in calm/quiet aurora displays but during incredibly impressive shows it might drop down to as low as 3. During one set of shots, we also increased the ISO as well. Lastly, one other adjustment that was made was with the type of lighting. Occasionally this was moved from auto to incandescent to get a whiter picture.

As a reminder, you absolutely need a tripod when deciding to photograph the Northern Lights. Blurry pictures would be such a bummer!

Have you photographed the northern lights? What were your northern lights camera settings?

You May Also Enjoy These Posts:

• Winter Sweden Itinerary
• Abisko Weather in January
• Abisko Weather in December
• Can you capture the Northern Lights on iPhone
• How to dress for viewing the Northern Lights in January
• Northern Lights in December: How to Pack
• Packing list for viewing the Northern Lights in December

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