Photographing Aircraft
Photographing aircraft can be a bit difficult. Based on past experience I have had some success and also some failures.
The first thing is trying to get the aircraft in the viewfinder and focused. I found, that just to get the shot, without worrying about composition, I set the camera to AF Servo mode and centre point focusing. This way I know that the camera will focus for me, and if I keep the aircraft in the centre of the frame, that’s where it will focus and not hunt on the other AF points. (of course it doesn’t always work, but at least you know what you are working with!)
Then, instead of just pointing the camera at the aircraft and keeping your finger half pressed to track the plane, I’ll focus on the plane as soon as it is big enough in the focus point, then lightly half press the shutter button, again and again, focusing in small increments. I found this works well with flying birds and with aircraft, instead of the camera doing all the work. This way, if theS aircraft slips off the focus point, there is less chance it will start to focus on something that doesn’t exist and so waste valuable time refocusing.
Next, exposure. The aircraft will normally be back lit, so a bit of overexposure is required making sure the sky doesn’t disappear to white, particularly on overcast and solid cloud days. A bit of blue sky is good, although can be boring so a bit of both is better.
Now, shutter speed. Not too much of an issue with jets. Keep it high, which it probably will be on auto, pointing it into the sky, but for older planes, like WWII, then you have the propeller issue and need a slower speed.
Too fast and you freeze the propeller, making it look like the aircraft is a static model, too slow and the whole aircraft is blurred. I’ve found between 1/125 & 1/320 seems to do the trick. It also seems to depend on whether the aircraft is coming toward you or passing. The Mustang in yesterdays blog, was coming towards me, and had a shutter speed of 1/640, leaving a little blur. I was lucky for the prop not to be frozen.This image shows a photo with cloud in it, compared to plain sky. It also shows one aircraft where the shutter speed was slightly too high and frozen the prop. The middle photo, seems just right with a shutter speed of 1/200
I think the above is a good guide, but you need to review your images as you take them and make adjustments to the conditions at the time. Of course, doing all of this, whist not missing the aircraft you are trying to photograph that is still flying above you! Thats what I’ll be trying to do this weekend!!