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Old 12th Dec 2011, 04:12
  #28 (permalink)  
nojwod
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Canberra
Posts: 71
Received 6 Likes on 2 Posts
Many years of aerial photography have taught me there's no hard and fast rules but that taking good oblique photos from a 172, even a 152 isn't hard. The best plane was a Cutlass (?) strutless, and I believe that the C210 and C337 are also strutless and therefore can be worth the additional expense for difficult shots.

Almost all the Cessnas I've employed have had the opening window RHS. One early model 172 didn't, I grabbed a black shroud and shot through the perspex, results were satisfactory but not recommended.

Depending on the subject, I'm happy with a 5 -10 degree bank slowly circling a target for some subjects, for others I specify tracking past the subject, wings level, at 10-15 degrees away to the left of parallel, which gives a fairly long clear view once the strut has cleared the subject.

Taking the door off is a waste of time. To get the benefit you need to poke the camera into the slipstream, and that causes all sorts of blurring, the bane of all aerial shots. The strut and wheel or spat also tend to creep into the corners of the photos more, perhaps it's because of an expected better field of view, the care factor diminishes? Also, I've given up asking for flap, it causes the window to fall well before an equivalent clean configuration, and if your track is correctly set up you'll have plenty of time to get the shot.

Do as many orbits as are necessary to ace the shot(s), I find very few of my first runs are exactly what I hoped, and a tracking difference as small as 50 metres at 1000' agl makes quite a difference to the shot.

I go for the fastest shutter speed every time. A good SLR should be able to focus properly at wide open aperture, with ISO set to 200 or 400, on a sunny day speeds of 1/2000 should be routine, and even in turbulence most shots will be clear.

Take as many shots as you can each side of your chosen point. Murphy's law is quite clear here, the exact perfect moment will be spoilt by turbulence or slipstream, the photo taken a second before or after will almost certainly be good enough to send Murphy packing.

I have found Google Earth a valuable aid in planning my runs. Setting GE height at 1000' agl, using the oblique function via the scroll wheel, I can get quite a good approximation of what to expect on the day. Once the angle and distance are OK in GE, it's then a simple matter of returning to vertical and plotting the exact position of the aircraft and the desired track, which I then print out and take as a reference.

In all but the clearest air, shooting towards the sun will cause haze to become much more obvious, so plan where possible to have the sun behind you, especially for vistas.

Best of luck in your endeavours, if nothing else you and the line pilot should get to have fun at minimal altitude, so much better than A to B work!
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