Why does the colour + brightness of Northern Lights look different in-camera vs. the naked eye?

+ A note on transcending human limitations through technology.

May 15, 2024

With so many people witnessing the aurora for the first time over the weekend, there has been a lot of talk about the brightness and colours of the aurora borealis. People are curious about how and why photos of the northern lights — whether taken with the latest and greatest mirrorless cameras or phones — don’t match what is observed with the naked eye.

Aurora at Bow Lake, Alberta, on the night of May 10, 2024. Photo: Paul Zizka.

Night photographers are well-acquainted with the idea that the capture in-camera will rarely be a loyal rendition of the experience with the naked eye. Understandably, a lot of new aurora enthusiasts were caught off-guard by the discrepancy. Essentially, the reason for the differences in brightness and colour is that the human eye has several limitations that don’t affect cameras. These include:

small size of the pupil
inability to perform electronic amplification
inability to acquire and accumulate light over several seconds
inability of the rods to detect certain hues

The human eye is limited compared to the camera’s technological abilities. Aurora borealis viewing in Banff National Park, Canada, on the night of May 10, 2024. Photo: Paul Zizka.

Several factors affect colour, and brightness, to some extent, in an aurora image: the atoms and molecules being impacted to give off the colours in the first place, white balance, light pollution, in-phone processing, residual ambient daylight, post-production/creative liberties, ambient moonlight, the fact that everyone perceives colour differently, the screen you are viewing the images on, and more. There will always be a significant difference between naked eye observation and photographs simply because we rely on incredible technology that allows us to transcend our human limitations and reveal beauty that is very much there but that we cannot see without special equipment.

Aurora Borealis at Herbert Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta. Photo: Paul Zizka.

My advice for those of you who want to experience a display that looks as close to the photos as possible is to go up North. The quasi-totality of my mid-latitude shots (and I have a few) is not representative of what I saw just standing there. But several of my high-latitude photographs are. So go to Greenland in the autumn. Head up to Alaska or the Northwest Territories come springtime. In terms of colour, you’ll still likely only see a whitish-green, but you may very well see the brightness that looks “like the pictures” — along with incredible structure and motion to boot.

I hope this clears up a little bit of confusion for some. Let’s get out there and marvel at Mother Nature’s grand displays and how fortunate we are to have equipment that allows us to take them in fully!