Aviation photography
A few weeks ago I went to the Oostwold airshow to photograph airplanes. In this post, I’ll share some tips and tricks I learned during this very sunny day. I know I haven’t been uploading in a while. Work and school require a lot of time at the moment ^^, but hopefully I’ll be able to upload more posts here soon!
Camera settings
To make your shooting a little bit easier when you get on location, you can prepare some settings on your camera in advance.
You’ll want to be using “continuous shooting” mode. When you hold the shutter button in this mode, you’ll be taking multiple pictures in a row. Now when you take a shot, there will be a higher chance you take a sharp photo (your camera will need to write a lot more data to the SD card, from all the photos taken. This might take a few seconds).
For your shutter speed, I’d suggest shooting at around double your focal length. I used a 240mm zoom lens, so I set my shutter speed to 1/400. This will eliminate most motion blur/camera shake. But you don’t want a to short shutter speed either. Shooting at a shutter speed shorter than 1/400 will make the propellers seem frozen, which will give an odd, unnatural look. The best shutter speed is the longest you can go without getting any unintentional motion blur/camera shake.
To adjust lighting for your photo, you can change your aperture to add or subtract some light.
If possible, set your focus mode to continuous AF. This focus mode will try to keep your moving subject continuously in focus. And for fast moving planes, this is the best mode to use.
Digital zoom
Nowadays, cameras shoot with such a high resolution, that you can digitally zoom (in post) without anyone even noticing. Almost every picture you see in the gallery below is digitally zoomed. So don’t worry if you can’t afford a super zoom lens like most of us. Often planes fly low enough that even with a 100mm and some digital zoom, you’ll still be able to get quite close-up pictures.
Get creative
One of the things I noticed looking back at my pictures, is that I barely took any photos from planes on the ground or any (extreme) close-ups. Something I’d like to do next time is to get a bit more creative with my shots. Maybe challenging myself to shoot at a shorter shutter speed. But that is for another time ^^.
Let me know what you think of my pictures from the gallery below! Any feedback in the comments is greatly appreciated =D.
