Thread by @hunterhurleywx

How to Photograph the Northern Lights With a Smartphone. An 𝕏 thread.

SWPC has issued a G4 Watch, effective tomorrow, November 12, and a G3 watch for tonight, November 11. Hype is starting to grow about potential Northern Lights viewings. This is the fourth G4 Watch SWPC has issued this Solar Cycle.

~ ~ Remember, the Northern Lights with CMEs is NEVER a guarantee. ~ ~

Photographers are beginning to charge their cameras in hope to capture the beautiful Aurora tonight and tomorrow night! “But what if I don’t have an actual camera?” That’s fine! The majority of modern day smartphones can easily perform well enough to capture crisp, clear pictures of the Northern Lights. In this thread, I will show you what settings I use to photograph the Northern Lights with my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra! This technique also applies to any modern iPhone, although your settings may be slightly different than mine. @spacewxwatch

Starting off, let's look at our latest cloud coverage map. Fortunately it appears that most of the CONUS will receive little cloud coverage, except for most of Wyoming and some of the northeast. Fortunately, we will not have much (if any) wildfire smoke like we did with our last G4 watch in June.

Moving on to how to use your smartphone to photograph the Northern Lights, since I use a Galaxy S23 Ultra, I will head on over to my camera's “Pro” module. If your smartphone camera does not have this module, most smartphones have a “More” tab with multiple modules within it.

From there, we have everything we need to get set up.

First, let’s take a look at our WB, or White Balance. Typically, I keep mine in the 4000K-4500K range for clean looking photos. This can always be edited around in post-editing as well.

The next thing we’ll take a look at is our Focus setting. I set mine to its “Multi” setting so everything around stays in focus and doesn’t become blurred (sometimes...)

Next is our EV, or Exposure Value, I tend to never mess with this setting (I have no idea what it does… lol) and keep it at a constant -2.0.

Shutter Speed is one of the most important settings when photographing the Northern Lights. The more bright it is outside, the less shutter speed you want. For me, since I mainly photograph the Northern Lights from northwest Missouri, I set my shutter speed to 10”-13” (10 to 13 second) exposures, but if the Northern Lights start to become too bright, or you’re fighting light pollution you can set a lower shutter speed. During the October 10, 2024 G4 event, I had my phone's shutter speed set to 3" (3 second) exposures since the Northern Lights were that bright where I was in southern Iowa.

ISO is also a necessary setting for taking pictures of the Northern Lights. ISO is your camera's sensitivity to light and it plays an important role in Northern Lights photography. Again, since I’m in northwest Missouri, my settings may differ from yours. I generally set my ISO to 1600-3200 on my smartphone, but as you get closer to light pollution or you have brighter Northern Lights, you may want to turn down your ISO to about 800. It also correlates to your shutter speed. The more ISO & longer shutter speed you have, the brighter your photos will turn out. It’s a delicate balance between the two.

With all of these settings in mind, all you need to do is throw your smartphone on a tripod, find a location that has darkness where you are and to your north, and start photographing northward, and you’ll possibly come out with images like this one! I recommend downloading an Intervalometer application too, it'll automatically take photos for you!

If you have any more questions or concerns, my DMs are always open!
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