set camera properly (Blue Mountains)

I struggled with the DSLR camera. I couldn't seem to access some settings. Frustrating and intimidating and off-putting, not feeling comfortable.

Steve was on the north porch, with others, viewing and imaging the aurora. I asked if he could help me. He found I had put the Canon in C1 mode. Ooops! Custom Settings 1 mode still showed M on the display. So I assumed I had been in the correct configuration. Not noticing, at the same time, that the white balance was customised (K), the image format was JPG large (L). Duh.

Thank you Steve!

Moving north of the parking lot, I reframed the shots, avoiding the edge of the house (and the infrared camera).

		30 seconds. ISO 1600. Long exposure noise reduction: auto. Sharpness: 4. Red aurora visible. Stars trailing. A little noisy. Good focus.
		30 seconds. ISO 1000. Long exposure noise reduction: off. Sharpness: 3. Red barely visible. More noise! Well, more hot pixels! Soft focus.
		30 seconds. ISO 1000. Long exposure noise reduction: off. Sharpness: 3. Poor focus.
		30 seconds. ISO 1000. Long exposure noise reduction: off. Sharpness: 3. Soft focus.
		30 seconds. ISO 1000. Long exposure noise reduction: off. Sharpness: 3. Better focus.
		20 seconds. ISO 1000. Long exposure noise reduction: off. Sharpness: 3. Focus still off.

All these photos (now with proper camera control) used the following settings:

• shot in RAW
• manually focused
• daylight white balance
• 18-55 lens at 18mm
• aperture f/3.5
• Adobe RGB colour space
• tripod mounted

All converted to JPG with DPP.

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The next morning I played a bit with the Mode Dial. Made a point of noting that the full Manual (M) is between the Aperture Priority (Av) and the Depth of Field (A-DEP) modes. Important to know, when setting the camera in the dark...

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That's very interesting: the in-camera noise reduction...