In-flight photography tutorial?

[ash]

Hi guys,

I'm a big fan of the in-flight CL stunt photos that men like Elwyn Aud seem to have mastered. I've taken a few mediocre shots myself without really knowing what I'm doing, so I'd like to learn something from the experts.

Has there ever been a how-to or tutorial type post done on photographing stunt models in-flight? I vaguely recall such a post, but the search function has been unable to find it for me.

Anyone know?

Thanks!

[peabody]

Elwyn is THE MAN.
I would reach out to him.
I wager he'll tell you about a camera first.

Good luck.

[Dan McEntee]

     Elwyn was doing it with the first generation digital stuff when it came out and he just got better and better as equipment improved also. He just has the knack for the timing. I'm sure he has discussed it here on the forums. Might be a tutorial exactly but he discussed the basics. I just don't know what search words to use. . Hopefully he'll see this and pop in. and I will just reiterate what has already been stated, Elwyn is THE MAN! when it comes to C/L flight shots.
    Type at you later,
   Dan McEntee
     

[Elwyn Aud]

Shoot a lot of photos! With my old Canon SX 30 IS it's very important to pre-focus on the spot you are hoping to catch the airplane in. If you are shooting against something like the dark shadows of the trees (Brodaks) make sure your exposure setting is correct for the plane which is usually in better light. One thing I've found recently that should have been obvious ages ago is when you have a fairly decent inverted shot except the canopy is heavily shadowed you can often reduce the contrast a lot and bring out the details in the dark areas. I usually hate not getting the canopy in the shot. It's like cutting off somebody's head in a photo, although a good shot with the sunlight showing through the ribs is usually fine canopy or not.

[Brett Buck]

I am not the master that Elwyn might be, but several things:

• pre-focus - almost all suitable cameras permit pre-focusing, either by partially-pressing the shutter release, or manually. Find a spot on the ground that the airplane is going to fly over, aim your autofocus spot(s) at it, half-press the shutter, and it will focus and stay there until you either take the picture or release it. If you have multiple focus modes, put it to single-servo (set it once and it stays) rather than continuous. Manual also works, turn the focus ring until the spot is in focus.
• Once you have pre-focused, pick up the airplane in the viewfinder, follow it around until it gets near the spot you want to take the picture, keep the airplane centered as well as you can, and hit the button when you think it's in the right place. This technique is called "panning", it tends to make the airplane sharp and the background blurred. If you try to just aim at something, and wait until it comes into view and "freeze" it, you are going to have a really low yield because there is lag in everything and the airplane might fly through the FOV in a few milliseconds
• I use program auto-exposure almost all the time (except when I use lenses that are not compatible with the metering). I leave it on Matrix Metering, which is generally sharp enough on Nikons to give me acceptable exposure almost all the time. Exposure issues are the same with almost any subject or activity, not unique to models. Assuming you are using raw digital, even the f16 rule is usually OK, it's pretty forgiving. Using film, negative film has tremendous tolerance for overexposure color negative film particularly so, so when in doubt, give it more exposure. Slide film is not at all forgiving, if anything you want to slightly underexpose, but it's really important.
• Digital cameras usually allow you to set the ISO setting, or have the camera pick it for you. This can be used to adjust either the aperture/depth of field or the amount of background blur while still using program auto-exposure. The lower the ISO is set, the more blur you get (due to slower shutter speed) and/or less depth of field (due to a larger aperture), the higher, the sharper. Even my ancient Nikon D90 (an antique in the digital world) works just fine up to ISO3200, and more modern cameras work *vastly better* at higher ISO. I generally use my with is set to a fixed ASA of 800, which gives decent background blur and OK depth of field. OF crouse you can set it manually as you wish. I have used as little as 1/15th of a second to make the background completely smeared which really sets off the airplane and gives the appearance of motion. Note that you can also use the depth of field, or lack thereof, to separate the subject from the background by making it out of focus
• I use medium telephotos to long telephotos almost all the time. Modern zoom lenses are fine and give very good results, and you aren't fiddling with lenses. For in-flight shots near the circle, I use (or put the zoom to) about 100 mm on my 2/3 frame (Nikon DX, Canon APS-C) camera, which is about equal to a 150 mm lens on a "full-frame" (Nikon FX, Canon APS, or 35mm) . Without any other idea in mine, I pick a 70-300mm zoom (I have a 30-year-old all-metal 70-300 that has a good feel and works well enough, although new ones are both lighter and better, optically. Carrying this stuff around is a non-trivial issue, I had to fall back to my 35mm stuff due to a problem not long ago, and had to lug around my old Nikon F4 (bought at a Lockheed auction when they went to digital) and the metal 300 mm and it damn near destroyed my elbow. Lighter, even plastic, lenses are OK and last well enough if you aren't dropping it.
• I think you need and SLR to do this reliably or at least something with a real optical viewfinder. I haven't tried any of the newest mirrorless cameras, but the old ones have absolutely hopeless lag in the displays for this purpose. They are dandy for normal static items, but you just don't have enough control over them for in-flight pictures. I also don't know how you control the plane of focus or how fast it is, so if it is always continuous, you are going to miss a lot of pictures
• Electrons are cheap!   I never use the "spray and pray" method (high-speed drive), I am always on single-shot exposure, even when it's 7 frames per second. But, your yield is very low (I am around 50%) because of missing or mis-framing. That's just the nature of the beast, I don't like that and don't work that way otherwise, but you can get a 1000-shot SD card, might as well use it

    Almost any current digital SLR will serve, and you can certainly get those relatively cheap. But technique is more important than the camera, and understanding what you are doing is much more important than the latest equipment. I have taken perfectly good in-flight pictures using an open-sight finder on a twin-lens reflex from about 1955 - but it's a lot easier now. The rules of composition are as they have always been since the renaissance , the "decisive moment" is no different from what it was in 1940. You are taking pictures of a very dynamic subject, make it seem that way.

    Brett

[Elwyn Aud]

Good points on the panning. I didn't think of mentioning that when I said to pre-focus on the spot you plan to shoot the airplane at. it just comes so naturally I didn't think to clarify.

[Brett Buck]

Good points on the panning. I didn't think of mentioning that when I said to pre-focus on the spot you plan to shoot the airplane at. it just comes so naturally I didn't think to clarify.

    I think that most people start by trying to just wait for the airplane to fly into the frame, then hit the shutter, but that's going to put the yield down to about 1%! You can tell that when they start talking about really fast shutter speeds to "freeze" the airplane. You can get focal-plane shutters that go as fast as "1/8000th" of a second but that's still not enough and would only yield massive distortion - since it really work at 1/8000th of a second, it's more like 250th of a second but moves both curtains at once to form a narrow slit that scans across (usually from bottom to top).

     The key takeaway is that there really isn't any particular magic about doing these pictures, learn the equipment you have and use the right (relatively simple) technique. The rest of it is like any other photography, fill the frame to the extent possible, focus on the interesting part and exclude the rest somehow, practice and experiment, and get a big SD card.

     BTW - what is your yield? I mean technical yield (in focus, not unintentionally blurred, no airplanes or head cut off, salvagable exposure) rather then artistic/photographic yield. On the former I just checked a few folders of airplane contest pictures and I was doing better than I thought, maybe 75% were technically acceptable (to me) and about 25% were actually good pictures. I spent a lot of time using film cameras and in particular, large format, so I am not that profligate when pushing the button, but 75% was higher than I would have guessed.

        Brett
   

[ash]

Thanks guys, you've really given me plenty to work with, from the fundamentals right through to technical matters well beyond my pay grade.

I'm using a Canon SX530, which is not a prestige professional unit, but seems to have the potential if I can fine tune the settings the get the best of the available light. Getting the focus to operate in single-servo mode as described is going to be a big step forward. My old Canon worked that way, but this one is continuous by default, now set to single. I will have to experiment a lot with aperture and ISO to get to grips with the effects. The auto and preset mode seem to be giving me pictures that are grainy, kinda washed out and too much depth of field.

Thanks for your help.

Here's one of my better shots so far, Kevin Barnes and his Yatsenko.

[Elwyn Aud]

     BTW - what is your yield? I mean technical yield (in focus, not unintentionally blurred, no airplanes or head cut off, salvagable exposure) rather then artistic/photographic yield. On the former I just checked a few folders of airplane contest pictures and I was doing better than I thought, maybe 75% were technically acceptable (to me) and about 25% were actually good pictures. I spent a lot of time using film cameras and in particular, large format, so I am not that profligate when pushing the button, but 75% was higher than I would have guessed.

        Brett
   
For really decent action shots my success rate is probably below 25%. I never have used the "Burst" setting". There are enough shots to sort through shooting single frame. One of the more difficult problems is figuring out where to pre-focus when shooting a plane high in the circle. A lot of that just comes from years of experience. I do find that when shooting a contest things don't start getting in the groove untii I've shot a half dozen or so flights, especially if I haven't been shooting much for a while.

[Dick Byron]

I have recently completes scanning all my photos, slides etc. Over 5000, from 1957 to 2018. here is a few. I have them all on a DVD. 

[Dick Byron]

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[Dick Byron]

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[Elwyn Aud]

Great shots!

[ash]

Very nice. I'd have kept Kodak in business to learn this on film!!