5 days? It's suppose to be rainy all week or mucky weather. As to a camera setting, is it a camera or a camcorder? I have a camcorder that also can take still pictures, but as I see it, a camera probably would be better but only still pictures. Also you may want to view about low-light settings as having a "Nightshot" setting or if you really do not want color (and then what is the purpose but that is all the better that they are really with cameras and not camcorders being better) and also a Super Nightshot setting. I was reading the other day about that stuff and now there are film cameras that have digital settings for manual exposures. Camcorders like mine do not really have manual exposures but have some Aperture Settings - like Sunset, Fireworks, and such others (going off of my camera).
However, I think the "Fireworks" setting is for bright fireworks like on July 4th, and may be the wrong setting as Auroras are Pastel and Dim or Reddish with other colors but mainly a sky event that is more pastel in nature.(unless one is further North then they may be brighter, but still dim according to the camera or camcorder, but better seen with the naked eye.)
That usually makes it a "Time Exposure" so like anything else they continually muck up unless you spend (no joke here) $5000 for a camera, what you get is an adequate camera or camcorder mainly for daylight pictures or a neon-light at night kind of settings. Dim, dim pictures are difficult to take without taking a time exposure. I think the slowest shutter setting I seen was like 1/4 sec, with cameras maybe having up to a few seconds or up to even say 60 seconds, but not so for camcorders or video recording still picture cameras. Although I have taken tape in the nigh, it is grainy and needed the Super Nightshot setting which is "green" and grainy like a CCD image taken by someone in astronomy. Although seeing excellent pictures in astronomy by an amateur at the Texas Star Party, and self-developed by a film (probably not digital at the time back in when - 1991) camera like the old-ones they use to make, the new digital cameras are mainly cut-down versions of everything that was before. In other words, one use to be able to leave the exposure open to take a like 13 second shot of Saturn if one wanted to because the film gathered more light when the exposure was manual. (that all had to be worked out a little or different lengths of exposures tried until a time length was found that yielded a good picture.)
I am looking for a exposure setting just in case despite the gloominess of the posting above.
Oh, one thing not to use is the Color Show Shutter, although it is not a fast moving object so maybe that is something to consider, as if for a night picture and moving object, it would be blurred. But the aurora will be blurred to the extent of just only adding more to it, so it builds up the image. The Nightshot setting on my camcorder sends out an infrared beam so it is about good for - 30 feet - see what I mean. The Super Nightshot setting makes a little like a CCD and the image is 16 times brighter so that will work but produce probably a green aurora. I am still looking, but there probably is no good-setting to use. (that is why now I am looking back to a digital camera that takes a film up to ASA3200 film because of all of this, I guess I did not understand at first.)
If a camcorder like mine, I suppose I would just use the Super Nightshot setting and run the film in the camcorder and maybe see a green aurora, because with editing, perhaps it would change to red color changing the image by editing.
Throw all the junk they make nowadays and sell it, I guess - in my case with my camcorder.
I just read for mine that if there is a mercury-sodium vapor light, I am suppose to use the Indoor setting and not the Outdoor setting.
Sunset setting with Super Nightshot may be a setting.
Take a pick and do not use to high a setting with any digital zoom as it also does not work that great either.
I see where I do have a adjusting the exposure manually (but again that is usually about the same) but it states "When recording dark pictures (night scenes) faithfully. (that usually means probably city lights and quite a few of them or so perhaps - didn't know I had that.)
Well, I guess you have to go through your manual that came with the camera or camcorder to see what the exposure might me, and read it with a grain a salt as a picture that is not meant to take sky pictures of stars or an aurora and try and find a manual setting that may make it better for a night shot.
On mine, I guess I would just use Super Nightshot setting and put up with the slightly green color of the image if it even showed an Aurora without using a camera that has a manual exposure setting like a real old camera that one attaches a shutter release cable to (as to not shake the camera) and press once to open the shutter and a few seconds later release it to close the shutter.
Well???
