How to Create a Time-Lapse of the Northern Lights

Being a photographer and a filmmaker, I've gravitated heavily toward the art form of time-lapse photography. It's the perfect blend of photography and videography, the best of both worlds. Because I mix this art form up with my undying love for capturing the night sky, I’m incredibly passionate about this process and sharing it with others.

Time-lapse photography is capturing consecutive photographs over a long period of time and then playing them back quickly in a series so that slow action appears to happen faster. Examples include clouds moving through the sky or the Northern Lights dancing above.

Despite my years innovating and learning new ways to execute new time-lapse ideas, I still find myself going back to the basics. The update from Sony that added an in-camera interval shooting function lets me do just that. Although it’s a stationary time-lapse, some creative thinking in post process allows me to work wonders with just one image sequence.

Before I jump into my simple approach to time-lapsing the Northern Lights, let me mention the gear that I currently use. Since the day it was released, my camera body of choice has been the Sony a7R III for two specific reasons. First, its 42MP resolution allows me to export an 8K time-lapse sequence if needed. Since I do take my images to the printer, it allows me to print in large format scale with confidence. The second reason is its ability to shoot fairly good video in low-light situations, which I quite often do under the natural light of a full moon.

My go-to lens of choice for general astrophotography and what I call the “King” of the night is the Sony FE 24mm f/1.4 GM. I have yet to see a lens produce sharper stars in the very corners of an image than the GM 24mm, especially at f/1.4. This alone is enough of a reason to reach for the GM 24mm before my other lenses.

Photographing the Northern Lights is similar in many ways to photographing the stars, since the camera setup is typically the same. However, there is one exception. An exposure time between 6-10 seconds is recommended because of the light’s rapid and unpredictable movements. Don’t forget that in time-lapse photography, once you hit that shutter button, you are committed 100%.

You are stuck with whatever camera values you’ve selected for the duration of the time-lapse. The reason why I recommend an exposure time of 6-10 seconds is that in the event you are blessed with a light show with extreme movement, your time-lapse image sequence will not look so washed out or blurry. Having a shorter exposure time will guarantee more of a snapshot of the lights dancing in the sky with more shape and detail. This also holds true to just taking single shots of the Northern Lights.

Camera Setup and Settings

Now on to the camera setup and settings. Because we were a few days shy of the full moon, I was especially excited to shoot. Some people tend to shy away from astrophotography in general when the moon is out because it may wash out the sky or make it difficult to expose for the natural moonlight. I say bring it on! Having this natural source of light allows me to shoot at a much lower ISO, in this case, at 400. Because of this, I was able to capture an extremely clean image sequence. Another benefit is that the moon helps to illuminate the entire scene.

Let's talk basic camera setup. I can't stress how important it is to shoot in raw for night photography. It will definitely help with your dynamic range, especially in the shadow areas. Just take my advice. Shooting in raw is a huge plus. The other thing to stress is manual, manual, manual. In astrophotography, everything should be in manual mode so you can have full control of the scene.

Your camera dial, as well as your focus, should be set to manual. Another important tip is to set your camera to a 2-second delay because this will prevent camera shake while taking your test images. When activated, the Sony interval shooting function will disarm the delay because it has one included in the app itself.

Color balance is more about personal taste. For me, I call it how I see it. If it's sunny, I set to sunny; cloudy, I set to cloudy. In this case, the moon is quite like the sun so I set that to sunny. I also use a filter called the Hoya Intensifier. (Hoya recently changed the name to the starscape filter. They are identical.) What this filter does is to reduce the yellowish and greenish color cast from artificial city lights. This improves overall contrast and is a huge help in post-processing. This is on my lens most of the time when I see any type of light pollution in the sky.

After proper setup, I dial-in on a happy balance of 10 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 400, color balance set to sunny. These are the settings I find work best to complement the natural moonlight and the dancing Northern Lights. I take a few test shots while utilizing focus peaking (which is set to red on my camera) and find the sweet spot where the stars are razor sharp. I then hit the AF-ON button on the back of the camera to zoom in and make absolutely sure that I am happy with the results.

Now the fun is set to begin. You can typically find the Sony interval shooting function under Shoot Mode/Drive2 on most of the newer Sony camera bodies. I prefer to save it to “My Menu” by adding it in the My Menu settings. Another tip to mention is if you’re considering using it frequently like I do, consider assigning it to a custom function button on your camera. I set mine to custom button C2.

Your camera is set up and ready to go. The next thing to do is open up the interval shooting function, which is on page one. Set that to On. Now consider your camera’s shooting start time. Although you can set it to roughly 99 minutes, I set it to 1 second because I don't want to miss any of the action. Now let’s take a look at the shooting interval. I set that to 1 second, as well, to maintain a smooth transition between each 10-second capture. Longer interval times are quite useful for time-lapsing clouds and the rising and setting of the sun and moon.

Now let’s talk about the number of shots we’ll be taking in our time-lapse. This is the big one! I personally set this for 240 shots because, depending on your exposure time, it will produce a time-lapse sequence for 8-10 seconds. On a given timeline of 24 fps, if you divide that number into 240, you will get 10. This will give you an outcome of 10 seconds. That finally brings us to AE tracking sensitivity. This is always set too high. It won't affect the process while in manual mode, but it’s very useful while in Aperture mode when I'm time-lapsing a sunrise or sunset. It really works well in calculating a much smoother transition in exposure from frame to frame.

The second page of the Sony interval shooting function allows for silent shooting and shooting in interval priority. These are both set to Off. Once I do my checklist on all of these settings, there is nothing much left to do other than hitting that shutter button, sitting back to relax, and watching the show.

After the Show

Now it's time to edit this image sequence down. What I primarily do first is set up a time-lapse output folder on my desktop. After applying basic edits in Adobe Lightroom, I select all 240 images and head up to file, then export to the selected folder I created on my desktop. My file settings are set to Image Format: JPEG and Color Space ProPhoto RGB at 100 quality and highest resolution possible. I find these to be my go-to export settings.

After this is completed and you have all 240 images in your selected folder on your desktop, you can close Adobe Lightroom and now open Adobe Premiere Pro. Here is where all the magic happens, and it’s possibly the easiest step yet. After you name your new project and direct the project you will be saving it to, you can head up to FILE>NEW> SEQUENCE. Here is where I give the sequence a name and dial in the new UHD 4K resolution specs, which are 3840 x 2160.

After completing that you can now import your image sequence from your output folder on your desktop into the project window below. You can do this by hitting “Cmd + I" on an Apple or “Ctrl + I" on a PC.

It may ask you to change sequence setting or keep existing settings. This is due to the size of the sequence images being larger than the project template itself. Make sure to click on “Keep existing settings.”

Once you have the happy balance you are looking for, it's time to render your time-lapse sequence by heading up the sequence tab, then rendering in and out. Make sure you have your in and out marks set on either side of your sequence first before starting to render the sequence.

From there it’s off to export. Keeping the same in and out marks set, head up to FILE>EXPORT>MEDIA. This should take you to an Export settings page. I found the best output setting to be as follows:

Format: Quicktime

Preset: Apple ProRes 422 HQ

Render at maximum depth CHECKED

Depth set at 16 bps

Use maximum render quality CHECKED

Note that after checking both render maximum depth and render quality Apple ProRes 422 HQ should switch to custom.

So that's it! After hitting export, it will be a few seconds or minutes depending how fast your computer is, and you should find a fun and useful time-lapse sequence of the Northern Lights to add into your next project.

I hope you found this article to be both helpful and fun. If you want to learn more, read Adventure Photography with Colby Brown and Stan Moniz as we photograph the Arctic Circle. We also made sure to make some videos with some key tips to help you get going yourself, for example, with time-lapse photography.

Check out my astrophotography workshop schedule and also more or my work on my website and Instagram.