Saturday Night at Lake Saimaa

I have spent last couple days at our holiday home at Lake Saimaa with my dad. Since the first aurora alerts on Friday night came out, I was hoping to do some late spring aurora photography, but alas things did go as I wished: this part of country got fairly solid cloud coverage with even some rain showers, so no hope to see anything in the sky. And strong northernly wind made the idea of staying outdoors and especially on open lake shore even less tempting. But luckily the strong geomagnetic storm continued into the next night and the weather looked to be slightly more cooperative as the wind weaked significantly and the clouds were gone. So, about only minor problem was the timing as here the darkness falls quite late and lasts only few hours.

1. Little after sunset


The added bonus was that in these conditions we were able to hear various birds, eg. black grouse (Lyrurus tetrix), black-throated loon (Gavia arctica), great bittern (Botaurus stellaris) and cuckoo (Cuculus canorus). The first two I did also see.

2. 23:20 - still not quite dark enough


But next time, some 20 minutes later, I didn't first see anything near the horizon (where you could still see some glow from the sun), but when I pointed my camera higher in the sky I did notice...

3. Northern lights!


4. Aurora corona


5. Auroras even in the direction where I didn't expect


6. Not just boring green auroras, but lots of red


7. Colourful


8. Magnificient colours


Sadly, after a while the activity seemed to fade and there was just faint auroras, which were hard to observe in this time of year, but these earlier ones were certainly the best northern lights show I had ever observed.

Thanks for looking! Any questions and comments welcome. Shot with α7R V + Sony FE 1.8/14 GM except the first photo, which was taken with α7R IV + Sony FE 1.4/24 GM, EXIFs should be intact if somebody want to check the more detailed shooting settings.

Great images, would love to see some Aurora sky with water reflections. TFS Heikki

Thanks for your explanantion and of course you're right. But we can still dream of a dream shot can't we?

Nice series and I like nr 4 and 7 the most.
I tried to acces the exif of the series to look for the settings to determine the difference between the darker and brighter shots but couldn't. Got the message: Sorry, this image can't be accessed. I am using Microsoft Edge with the online EXIF Viewer plug-in.

Magnificent! Love them.

Excellent captures, Hezu
Anyway you were a lot luckier than I or most of us in the Southwest. I went outside and all I saw was dark, black sky. Like you said, great colors, quite pastel