Aircraft photography HELP!!

[Willid1]

So I should start of by saying that I consider myself a reasonably experienced photographer, favourite subject is motorsport which I feel I have a good handle on (mostly) and this translates to aircraft on the ground and taxying quite well, but once they take off it all goes to pot!!

Here I am talking specifically about photographing propeller aircraft where the shutter speed needs to be lower to get some nice prop blur.

I'm now using an R7 (1.6x crop) and a 100-400 so using this at the long end with a 1/350 shutter speed is of course asking for trouble but I keep seeing razor sharp images with this sort of combination from other photographers.

I have had a few sharp images using these settings/equipment while photographing aircraft at my local airfield - proper rivet counting sharp - when the aircraft are taking off/landing, but not very many, quite hit and miss.

Duxford last Sunday I don't think I had a single what I could call "sharp" image. I tried with and without IS and used both mode 1 and mode 2 and I could not really see any difference (all equally bad) between using the modes and having IS turned off. Looking at the images, even the ones where the plane was quite large in the frame, they had a peculiar look to them that I would describe as "hazy". 32mp is a lot for a crop sensor but I have seen very acceptably sharp images from this combination that I have been very happy with.

Having spent all day shooting into the light at Duxford I do wonder if the atmospheric conditions make a real difference here to the point where some days (and especially photographing into the light) you are not going to see the best images. I have not seen images like this from photographing planes at the Shuttleworth collection where the light is always beautiful in comparison

One further question if I may is concerning gimbal tripods/heads. This would seem to be a good if unwieldy solution to the low shutter speed panning conundrum, any thoughts on these??

David

 

[soupdragon]

So I should start of by saying that I consider myself a reasonably experienced photographer, favourite subject is motorsport which I feel I have a good handle on (mostly) and this translates to aircraft on the ground and taxying quite well, but once they take off it all goes to pot!!

Here I am talking specifically about photographing propeller aircraft where the shutter speed needs to be lower to get some nice prop blur.

I'm now using an R7 (1.6x crop) and a 100-400 so using this at the long end with a 1/350 shutter speed is of course asking for trouble but I keep seeing razor sharp images with this sort of combination from other photographers.

I have had a few sharp images using these settings/equipment while photographing aircraft at my local airfield - proper rivet counting sharp - when the aircraft are taking off/landing, but not very many, quite hit and miss.

Duxford last Sunday I don't think I had a single what I could call "sharp" image. I tried with and without IS and used both mode 1 and mode 2 and I could not really see any difference (all equally bad) between using the modes and having IS turned off. Looking at the images, even the ones where the plane was quite large in the frame, they had a peculiar look to them that I would describe as "hazy". 32mp is a lot for a crop sensor but I have seen very acceptably sharp images from this combination that I have been very happy with.

Having spent all day shooting into the light at Duxford I do wonder if the atmospheric conditions make a real difference here to the point where some days (and especially photographing into the light) you are not going to see the best images. I have not seen images like this from photographing planes at the Shuttleworth collection where the light is always beautiful in comparison

One further question if I may is concerning gimbal tripods/heads. This would seem to be a good if unwieldy solution to the low shutter speed panning conundrum, any thoughts on these??

David

Do you have any examples?
Obviously I can imagine what a blurred soft images looks like but an example with shooting data might be helpful.

 

[Hadge]

If you say motorsport is your thing, what shutter speed do you use there? Do you pan shots down to say a 1/60 sec? People won't show you the missed ones and believe me there will be some but it is down to technique and practice. I'd suggest you try slow speed panning as at a race track you get lots of chances with cars/bikes going past all the time and then see what results you get. Work your way down on the speed for panning, start at say 1/250 and then 1/125 and then see how you get on with 1/60 sec. It's not easy either.

 

[Faldrax]

As Paul said, for prop aircraft the closest thing is panning - so hopefuly you have a reasonable level of experience with that - it's not something I do a lot of, but you can need a ss as low as 1/150 for some prop aircraft (different aircraft have different prop speeds, so need different ss to get a given amount of blur) - it also depends on how much blur you want.

I do have a gimbal head for my tripod, and find it works well for more distant aircraft, flypasts, etc - where you can line it up and just follow, but for anything close, going overhead, etc, then you need to handhold.

 

[GeeJay57]

One thing to consider when shooting aircraft against the sky, is to take a meter reading from the ground or use spot metering.

On shutter speed for propellers, this shot (clearly not against the sky…) was at 1/350th, 200mm