A glacial river in GreenlandGetting your settings right is important when shooting from the air. Due to low light and strong vibration, many images from this shoot turned out blurry.
In the previous article in this series, I talked about the equipment one might use for aerial photography. So what about technique, and especially camera settings? What should you consider when shooting from the air?Â
The important thing to remember here is that you´re shooting from a moving, vibrating aircraft instead of from stable ground. This simply means that in order to keep your shots sharp, you´ll need to use a high shutter speed. Remember that the compensation mechanisms in stabilized lenses are meant to deal with human movement, not high-frequency vibration, and will thus offer little help. Same goes for your own hands´ stability: even if you´re rock solid, the aircraft is not, and you should always bear that in mind or suffer the consequences (as I unfortunately have in the past).
Depending on the angle of view, I´d recommend shooting at least 1/400th of a second to make sure the shot is sharp enough, preferably even faster, and faster still if the focal length is long. When shooting from a plane, expect to need even faster shutter speeds, as wind can often move the lens and even change the zoom settings, as it sucks the lens out of the window. To keep your shutter speed in check, don´t be afraid to use a higher ISO setting. I frequently use ISO 400, 800 and when it´s darker even 1600 and 3200. Having a bit more noise and less dynamic range is a much better alternative to having a blurred shot. You can also use relatively wide apertures, since the subject is far away and depth of field is therefore large.
Shooting at ISO 800 is a no-brainer when light is low and you`re in a Cessna.
While I talked about equipment in the last article, I left one piece of gear to this article, since I wanted to link it to expo ...
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