Aurora borealis reflection in the Koyukuk river

Aurora reflection in the Koyukuk river, arctic, Alaska. Canon 1Ds Mark III, 24mm 1.4L, 15 sec @ f/1.4, ISO 800.

Aurora reflection in the Koyukuk river, arctic, Alaska. Canon 1Ds Mark III, 24mm 1.4L II, 15 sec @ f/1.4, ISO 800.

People have a keen interest in the Aurora borealis images, so I’m posting another one from my recent Arctic photo tour. We had unusually warm temperatures, and in some parts of Western Alaska, all time record high temps were set. This is usually not favorable, since the snow melts and things look pretty brown. However, there is always a silver lining. The warm weather also means that the rivers have remained unfrozen for a little longer. And in this photo, it affords the chance for a beautiful reflection of the aurora in the water. Some of our other photo tour clients got some fantastic shots of this. At first I did not bring out my camera and tripod as I was helping the others. But I could resist no longer and ran to get my tripod and camera, I was a little late for the great stuff, but got a few nice ones.

On a more technical note, I used Canon’s new 24mm f1.4L II, a very fast lens. However, it is extremely difficult to achieve precision focus. My horizontal frames were soft but the vertical ones were pretty sharp. In my discussion with Canon CPS, they said that there are different vertical and horizontal focus adjustments on the camera and the lens. So, when I return from the next trip, the body and lens will go to them for tuning, and we shall see how much of an improvement results.

  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • RSS
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Buzz

Troy - Awesome work Patrick. Just to get to that point..well done. I can’t wait to try that lens out.

Kari - You got the purples! Beautiful capture–I’ll be sending you some of my favorites from the trip once I fiddle with them in Lightroom. Can’t wait to see the rest of the group’s photos!

Patrick - Hi Kari,
The second trip is over and we had a great time. A bit less aurora, but amazing polar bears. Send on a few of your pics when you have a chance. I’ll be posting some images from our second trip in the next few weeks.
Patrick

Patrick - Troy, I’ll have more to say on the 24mm 1/4L in a future post. Don’t run out an buy one quite yet.
Patrick

Your email is never published or shared. Required fields are marked *

*

*

There was an error submitting your comment. Please try again.

T w i t t e r
R e c e n t
G a l l e r i e s