The first day I got my camera it was a super bright full moon, but no auroras. I wanted to understand what everyone was talking about so I did a lot of testing to just see what happened on different settings so I must have run in and out about 8 times setting it up on one setting (e.g. iso 800 and 12seconds on a manual focus Rokinon 2.8 lens).
I’d take about 15 pics, pull the card and run inside and put them on my computer to really see what it was doing (since I had not figured out how to zoom on screen yet). I did this over and over and over and ended up figuring out how to (mostly) focus on stars. I didn’t get the moon very well, but apparently that is a different skill set than doing auroras. It did teach me a lot and now when I’m out, I’m still doing that but the range is different. I stick to between 800 – 1250 iso and my seconds is between 4-15. I have not quite figured out the perfect balance, but it’s getting there!