Fiming Aurora Borealis

[Colin McDonald]

I know there have been various threads on this subject over the years, but I'm bringing it up because last night there was a second screening of "Joanna Lumley in the Land of the Northern Lights" on BBC4 last night. If you are able to use the BBC iPlayer it's well worth a look: BBC iPlayer - Northern lights - Joanna Lumley

There's another screening on 26th December at 5:30 pm:
Joanna Lumley in the Land of the Northern Lights on BBC HD at 5:30pm December 26th, 2008 - UK TV Guide

Since the first screening in September* this year there has been a bit of misinformed speculation on the web about whether the Aurora scenes at the end were faked by uncredited CGI. The facts are readily available to those willing to do a small amount of research.

Article on Takeaway Media website: Takeaway Media - Award Winning Factual Television

Article on the website of Kjetil Skogli, the acclaimed Norwegian Aurora specialist guide and photographer used as consultant by Takeaway Media: http://www.kskogli.no/aurora/index.php?page_id=34

It's interesting to note that it was decided not to attempt using "conventional" HD video acquisition to record the Aurora - as has been suggested previously on dvinfo.

Even the delectable Joanna (who hasn't quite grasped the full technical details, bless her) attempted to explain it thus:

“It’s not earthly light, these are solar atoms hurtling past and getting sucked in by the magnetic force of the world, you have to slow the camera apertures right down to get enough of this extraordinary light in. I had to stand as still as a rock, with the wind blowing and buffeting, so that they could film and then later show it in real time; it’s a weird way of filming, but there’s no other way of doing it. I think it may well be the best film the world has ever got of the Lights, they are phenomenally hard to capture.”

[Andy Tejral]

Now that's just cruel. Post a link that a majority of us can't use. There are also clips on the Takeaway site that I can't see.

OK, I'm almost over it.

I'm surprised that they couldn't get anything useable from a video camera. Don't these professional 'film-replacement' cameras have slow shutters? The footage I got with my vx1000 were certainly noisy but you could see the aurora-it had a 1/4 second accumulation. Its surprising that technology hasn't advanced since it came out.

[Colin McDonald]

Originally Posted by Andy Tejral

Now that's just cruel. Post a link that a majority of us can't use. There are also clips on the Takeaway site that I can't see.

OK, I'm almost over it.

Sorry about that Andy! I had another look and this is the best I could find (I don't usually encourage unauthorised Youtubing) Hope it works this time: YouTube - Joanna Lumley Views Northern Lights - SIGNED

Also, Kjetil Skogli's link was wrong in my first post - now fixed.