Contains:  Northern lights
Red Sprites over Czech Republic, Dreamdiver_X

Red Sprites over Czech Republic

Red Sprites over Czech Republic, Dreamdiver_X

Red Sprites over Czech Republic

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Biggest Red Sprite group I've captured at 29.06.2022, 23:05pm. Seen from South Germany, Rottendorf (Würzburg). The thunderstorm was approx. 450 - 460km away from my position, over Czech Republic.

One shot with sprites, stacked with additional 19 frames in Photoshop. 28mm lens, F1.4,  0.5 seconds, ISO 1600.   After more than 3500 pictures I had 6 frames with more or less visible Red Sprites.

If you want to capture Red Sprites, some tips from my side:

1.) Look for severe thunder storms with lot's of lightnings. Go to lightningmaps.org
2.) Check the distance: Max distance is about 550 to 600 km (sprites are close to the horizon), minimum distance is about 100km (depends on weather situation, cloud coverage on your position)
3.) A normal non modified camera is sufficient. Yes, a astro-modified camera makes it a little bit more easy to detect faint sprites. But the picture above was made with a normal EOS R6.
4.) For short distance to the thunder storm use a more wide-angle lens (for 150 to 200 km I use often 28mm on a fullframe camera), for distance of 300 to 400km you can use 50mm and I've seen some other photographers used higher focal lenght (85 or 135mm for distances of more than 400km). But the higher the focal length, the more you have to check your direction. 

You have 3 options to capture:

a. Capture a video: Take a video, with longest exposure time (in my case with the R6 it's 1/8 second). Get the frames with red sprites and convert it to an image file. Stack some additional pictures to reduce the noise - Because of the short exposure time of the video you have to increase the ISO to a very high value (6400, or higher, though you have a good & bright lens). But don't stack to much (e.g. with photoshop layers "brighten", ...), otherwise you will ruin smaller details of the sprites. A video is easier to chekc for sprites, jus reduce the speed of the video to 0.5 times or similar. Video is the best option for beginners!!!!!!!!

b. Capture image series in electronic shutter (if possible): Doesn't ruin your shutter. But you have reduced Bit-Depth (not all, but most of the cameras). Use burst mode and a remote control to capture pictures in a row as fast as possible, to reduce the possibility to miss a sprite in the the camera "break".

c. Capture an image series in normal shutter mode: Advantage: Max. Bit-depth. But it's straining the shutter. I would chose this option, only in case of severe thunderstorms, with more than 100 lightning per minute in range.


Good luck!  

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