Originally Posted by
dn88
mr_rodge, you can open the window on the C150 but I didn't fancy it yesterday, too cold!
Do you have a DSLR? If so I'd follow these:
- Adjust ISO according to lighting conditions. If it's semi-sunny (as in these shots) then ISO 200 should do. ISO 400 starts to make the images quite grainy, so I avoid this unless it's particularly dark.
- Set manual mode, aperture around f8 gives you a good depth-of-field and shutter speed of around 1/200 should be manageable if you don't zoom in too far. Remember though that 1/200 is still relatively slow, so you need a steady hand otherwise you'll blur it. If you're blurring them still, raise the shutter speed to around 1/320. Don't go too high, as you'll get darker images.
- Don't rest the lense on the window, as it'll vibrate and give you a blurred image. Steady your hand on the window and hold the lense very close but not touching.
- If possible, have someone turn the aircraft so you're looking down at the ground, rather than having to point the lense down which tends to give reflections.
- The window will take out a lot of the sharpness and natural contrast from the image. Simply use photoshop (or another free editing software) to add some sharpening and contrast so that you get proper shadows.
That's about all I can offer in a quick summary!
In my view what to do depends on the camera. It's true that my old Olympus E510 did start getting grainy at ISO 400, but my Pentax K5 ii is pretty fair quite a lot higher - ISO 1600 is quite acceptable. I also take the view that a noisy shot is often better than no shot and I can always delete it later if it's not got any merit.
My approach would be to use Aperture priority and dial in f8 as that is around the sweet spot for most lenses including mine. However I'd quite happily open up if necessary, and for this sort of shot depth of field isn't usually an issue - everything beyond the plane itself will be at infinity. Depends of course on what focal length is used but with the usual sort of kit lens it will all be fine even at f5.6.
However when an image is substantially white - snow, fog for example - the camera will underexpose. Dialling in a stop or two of overexposure can help, though it can be fixed in post-processing. The problem with dialling in overexposure is that you can accidentally end up with some over-exposed photos.
I've taken photos in gliders and sometimes the reflections rather add to the images. I was in a 2-seater with someone else doing the lookout and flying...