Don’t let N. Lights social media photos fool you: Expert
ROCKY RIVER, Ohio (WJW) — Those photos of the Northern Lights being posted everywhere showing exceptionally brilliantly bright colors of purple, green, and red are accurate depictions to cell phone camera lenses, but not even close to what we saw with our naked eye, according to celestial gazers and a professional photographer.
George Avata saw the northern lights from Lake Erie’s Rocky River Beach, along with hundreds of people who gathered there Friday night.
“When I saw the super colorful photos of the aurora borealis on Facebook, my neighbors and I went to the lake,” Avata said. “We couldn’t believe how much brighter and colorful our cell phone cameras made them look compared to what we saw at the same exact time with our eyes, but I’m still so tickled I saw it in person.”
Others at Huntington Beach in Bay Village echoed what Avata said, while the aurora borealis was a rare treat “the colors were much more faint with my naked eye than the brilliantly vivid pictures I took with my phone one second after looking at the sky,” Avata said.
“Cameras are collecting actual light that really is there, it’s just that they do it so much better than our human eyes,” Andy Fowkes who owns AF Photography in Avon Lake told Fox 8 News Saturday.
Giant Eagle soon offering reusable bags for free
“The cell phone camera can expose longer which makes more light enter the sensor. A photo I took had a 15 second exposure which means the shutter was open for 15 seconds and it let all that light in during the time it was open,” Fowkes added.
“Cell phone cameras have amplifiers in their sensors for better night detection, more importantly the size of the sensor is physically larger at 30 millimeters compared to a human retina sensor, which is only 6 millimeters!,” astronomer Jay Reynolds told Fox 8 News.
Avata saw the 2 the photos below taken in Rocky River by Fox 8 Web Producer Jordan Unger who used a much lower shutter speed, “those are really nice photos, accurate and how I saw it with my own eyes,” Avata said.
“I would say his (Unger) photos are very close to what the naked eye saw Friday night.
Courtesy: Jordan Unger
Watch: Bull visits FOX 8 ahead of upcoming rodeo
The next images below are also from Rocky River, and show how intensely colorful the cell phone photo on top appeared, while the other faint image on the bottom taken a second later is a freeze frame/screen grab from the phone’s video camera that shows a “truer” view of how the lights appeared to the eyes, Avata said.
The dazzling photo below was taken by Fowkes in Avon Lake with the camera set to a “15-second exposure,” he said.
“I’m thrilled I saw the lights in person though,” Avata said. “It still felt magical and left me with a good feeling I’ll keep with me, and I don’t have plans to go to Finland to see wildly bright northern lights in person. Overall this was quite impressive.”
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to Fox 8 Cleveland WJW.
