Aerial photography?

Zarathustra

Hello fellow Grinners!

I've been asked to do some nighttime aerial photography of a Hindu temple and was curious if anyone here has had much experience with it. I'll be shooting from a two seater airplane about 1000' up. Any tips or tricks or gotchas would be greatly appreciated, and I might even name you as my Short Term Durational Personal Savior for the week! How's that for incentive?

The only piece of fast glass that I currently own is a 50/1.8, but I may be up for renting/buying something longer if it would be needed. The temple is almost a square city block. I've looked at some pictures taken of it last year and figure that I should be able to get the shutter speed down to about 1/125 at f/1.8 if I bump up my ISO a bit. Am I setting myself up for disaster?

Thank you all,
Zarathustra

pathfinder

I have never shot from a plane in flight after dark, but I doubt you will be able to photograph very much except where there are artificial lights or at least candles.

Can you shoot near dusk, in twilight, after sunset, but before the sky turn black? I think that will provide much better visual possibilities. After real dark, roofs won't be getting much light except moonlight or starlight. A full moon might help, but images illuminated by only a full moon, usually involve shutter speeds measured in seconds, not 1/100th of seconds, even at ISO 1600.......

This image was shot in full moon light at the ShootOut in Utah last fall - ISO 1600 30 seconds f 5.6



F1.8 is about 3 stops faster 30 seconds /2 = 15 sec /2 = 8 seconds /2 = 4 seconds.


Hmmm = 4 seconds from a moving plane might be a problem. Note that there were no artificial lights in this shot of Double Arch.

I will be interested to hear from folks with more experience of this sort than I have.

Zarathustra

This particular shoot will be all about the artificial lights. Saturday is the start of Diwali, the Festival of Lights so the temple will be lit up very brightly. Sorry I didn't mention that.

The shoot may not be taking place unfortunately. My buddy does not know if the temple will be lit up for more than just Saturday night, and there will be fireworks which kind of stomps on the idea of entering the airspace. I'll post whatever I get if we go. Even if it sucks. I may just have to go for a long exposure and pretend that I was being creative.

Thanks for the reply!

ElginetPhotos

Zarathustra wrote:

This particular shoot will be all about the artificial lights. Saturday is the start of Diwali, the Festival of Lights so the temple will be lit up very brightly. Sorry I didn't mention that.

The shoot may not be taking place unfortunately. My buddy does not know if the temple will be lit up for more than just Saturday night, and there will be fireworks which kind of stomps on the idea of entering the airspace. I'll post whatever I get if we go. Even if it sucks. I may just have to go for a long exposure and pretend that I was being creative.

Thanks for the reply!

Keep in mind you will be dealing with a heavy vibration factor in any small plane so remember, don't rest your arm on the armrest to get the shot or bring a cushy pillow to use for your arm.


If you rent something.....make it good, like a 150/2.8 but keep in mind the vibration factor using a long lens. Your 50mm I don't know about. Might be a bit far as you have to stay 1000ft. above and 2000ft. horizontally from any structure. That's going to put you over a 1/2 mile away at best.

Not sure how much you're making on this.....but another solution to your vibration/high-ISO factor could be a Kenyon Stabilizer. They rent em....but they're not cheap.

Zarathustra

It ended up not happening anyway. :cry They did use fireworks on Saturday and did not have the temple lit up any other day. Oh well. We might give something similar a try some other time. My buddy looks for any excuse to take the plane up, and I take any excuse to bust out my camera so hopefully we'll get something put together sometime soon.

Thanks for the tips!

dm50384

shooting from a small plane @ 1000ft AGL at night is a challenge. You need a fast shutter speed and fast lense. you will have to use a high iso and edit with a good denoise software. wide angle will work best and crop when editing. As you know the closer you zoom the shakier things get.
This photo was taken by myself at 1200 ft AGL( above ground level).
i was using nikon 18-200 vr lense set at 30 mm with a shutter speed of 1/125 sec. iso was 100.
It is obvious I needed a faster shutter speed. this was my first try at shooting fireworks from the air and i quickly learned that it was tougher than it looked. A kenyon stabilizer is on my wish list. there isn't much room in a small plane for all that hardware so i shoot all fireworks dispalys on a tripod on terra firma.