Camera+equipment for that great shot?
 

Hey guys!
I am a light packing longhaul pilot and need a compact system camera with at the most 2 lenses for taking photos of:

1.landscapes through the cockpit window (Greenland, Siberia and stuff like that)

2.regular layover pics, usually from street life, close ups (faces,animals,plants whatever), panoramic photos

I suppose I'll need some kind of filter when taking photos through the layered A340-window. Zooming would be cool too, so I at least can take a pic of that Jumbo or 380 passing by from behind...
So, any suggestions for a newbie who mostly uses his Iphone for the pics what to buy? I do have an EOS 500D but it's too big.
Thanks!

Pick your camera from any you want. The cockpit window will provide more distortion than the "worst" of the lenses.

Leave the polarizing filter off; that is the one that will show all the stress patterns in the windows.

Any system camera will do. The smallest one as far as i know is the Samsung NX mini, but the sony ones (NEX-3 or Alpha 5000) are pretty small as well, Nikon and Olympus have some nice ones too.

I treated myself to a sony A7, which is not the smallest one around but the smallest one with a full frame sensor. Downside is that the lenses need to be bigger, upside is the great picture quality especially in low light situations. For most situations during a tour the kit lens (28-70mm) is actually not bad, although the whole system is smaller with my 35mm lens. That isn't really suited for airborne landscape pictures though and certainly not suited for air to air pictures, for those a tele lens would be better, its great for street life pictures and groundbased landscape pictures though.

Might not be able to do exactly what you're after (namely the landscape shots from cruise, I blame the dirty and layered windows not the camera), but I have a lot of fun with my GoPro in and out of the cockpit.

I take my canon 70D with a canon L 24-105mm with me pretty often. Any wider than 24mm on a crop sensor will get reflections from the cockpit and alot of flare. 105mm is sufficient if the other traffic is within 2nm and 1000ft vertically if you want a nice air-to-air shot. You also have wifi allowing for some fun editing in the air.

For street photography and filming it's a great combo as well. Since the 24-105mm is a kit lens that comes as standard together with the 5D you can find them for a good price second hand. The 70D has a superb autofocusing system. Most point and shoot cameras will have a big problem catching up with air-to-air shots unless you are flying parallel to the subject.

The solution for your problem is to get a bigger flight bag :}