Aurora Borealis with a Leica?

[spicoli]

Hey Forum,

I have a question: Have any of you tried photographing the aurora borealis with a Leica M? I ask as I used to live in Alaska and routinely froze my a** off behind my trusty Nikon FM3A doing that very thing. Anybody try it with a M? Photos attached taken by me with the aforementioned FM3A.

PS: Sorry for the lousy quality of the attached, had to downsize them to attach.

 

[KM-25]

I would say any mechanical M with a good fast aspheric is going to knock the socks off of the FM3A, I can only say that because I currently own both and find the color saturation and contrast of either the 28 Summicron or 35 Summilux aspheric's to be outstanding for low light.

 

[oftheherd]

Nice photos spicoli. I often wish I could get a chance to photograph that.

KM-25, I don't own any Leica gear so I am not in a position to question your statement. It's just hard to believe lenses of the quality of Nikon would be that easily beaten down by any other brand. Granted that using Kodachrome 25 should be a good film to show differences. Still ...

 

[KM-25]

Nice photos spicoli. I often wish I could get a chance to photograph that.

KM-25, I don't own any Leica gear so I am not in a position to question your statement. It's just hard to believe lenses of the quality of Nikon would be that easily beaten down by any other brand. Granted that using Kodachrome 25 should be a good film to show differences. Still ...

There is a big difference...

Take the 28mm F/2 AIS Nikkor and compare it to the 28mm F/2 Summicron and then do the same with the Leica and Nikon 35mm 1.4 lenses and what you will find is stunning.

The Nikon 28 is really good wide open, some coma, some CA and some smearing from about 1/3 from the center, contrast is decent though.

The Nikon 35 is not as good as the 28 wide open. It is quite soft actually so for star scenes it really needs to be at F/2.

On the other hand, both the 28/2 and the 35 1.4 Leica lenses are magnificent wide open. No CA, no coma even in the very corners and sharp, sharp, sharp with incredible contrast and color saturation.

Now a Zeiss 28 might even the playing field on the FM3A, I have the 35 ZF and it is really good, even wide open. I did this 30 second exposure with it at ISO 6400 on a D700:

 

[aizan]

love the combined landscape/starscape! the only other photographs of this sort i've seen is one photo on flickr, and one on the cover of big magazine (which the astrophotography buffs didn't seem to like).

 

[Chuck Albertson]

It's the same as taking time exposures with your Nikon: mount the camera on a tripod, frame and focus, pop open the shutter with a locking cable release, close it after a few minutes. Repeat as necessary.

 

[rogue_designer]

make sure to remove any filters. Otherwise you can get interference rings within the aurora.

 

[calexg]

RFs work just as well as SLRs here in the Yukon for shooting the northern lights.