How to Photograph Them · Part iv
Edition
Shooting video? Forget it.
Video, unlike a photograph, is a complex, energy-hungry task — the weakest link on an Arctic night.
In Swedish Lapland, while sledding with Siberian wolves, I wanted to shoot video on my phone. The phone was in the pocket of my thick overalls, close to my skin, toasty and fully charged. Even so, it gave up shortly after I started recording.
×Corrected · 2024·Sony A7S III classIn 2019 that was an iron rule. Today bodies in the class of the Sony A7S III, A7 IV and Canon R6 II can capture a night landscape as video even at ISO 51200 — the curtain's real-time dance is now within reach. Even so, in practice time-lapse still gives more controlled results; on long nights especially, you need control over every minute.
+Added · 2024·S-Log + 10-bitIf you're going to shoot aurora video, turn on S-Log3 or a similar log profile and record in 10-bit. The uncompressed colour information you hold in the dark is the only way to rescue the curtain's green-to-pink transition in post — in an 8-bit recording the green collapses into a single “slab.”In motion · time-lapse
This page's history
- ×New-generation mirrorless video capability
- +S-Log3 + 10-bit recording note
- ○Original · book edition