Aircraft in Flight Photography

General Tips

Know before you go:

• Wear earplugs! Fighter jets are incredibly loud, as are some passenger jets.
• Protect your skin! Sunburns and skin cancer are no fun. I wear long-sleeve shirts, even when it’s hot. I wear a sun hat, something with a brim that wraps 360 degrees and casts a shadow on my face and neck. I find this works better for me than sunscreen and exposed skin. Then I don’t have to periodically reapply sunscreen and deal with slimy hands on my camera.
• Many aircraft trail smoke. If the wind is light, the smoke will hang around. Get your shots early before the smoke accumulates.
• Best to shoot in manual exposure mode; get the exposure right in early test shots; the rest will be correct. The only time this can be a problem is when it’s partly cloudy and the aircraft are moving in/out of the cloud shadows, or if you’re positioned where the aircraft are sometimes directly-lit and moving to back-lit, or vice versa. In practice these situations are rare and it’s not a problem if you end up with some underexposed shots. Just don’t overexpose. If you’re not confident in manual mode, then go with shutter priority.
• Use continuous focus mode.
• Batteries: charge ‘em, take spares if you have any.
• Storage cards: format them before you leave for the airport. Take spares if you have any.
• Shoot in raw mode. You’ll have lots of options in post-processing.

Composition

Approaching aircraft make better subjects than departing aircraft, just like birds. Absent the ability to shoot from an aircraft, shots of aircraft will almost always be from below with the sky as the background. Care must be taken not to under-expose the aircraft against that bright background. Compositions where the aircraft is banked and/or climbing are generally better than those where the ship is flying straight and level. Shots where the top of the aircraft is visible are preferred, which means such shots are usually only possible when the aircraft is banked. Head-on or side-on shots are also less interesting than oblique angles. But, you have to take what you can get; they don’t always present the perspective that you want. Fill the frame. If they’re approaching, wait until you get the composition that you want.

Airplanes in a Dive at the Air Show at EAA Airventure

Shutter Speed

Airplanes with Propellers are generally slower than jets, but the trick with them is to be sure to shoot with a shutter speed that is just too slow to freeze the propeller tips, but still fast enough to freeze the rest of the aircraft. In practice, I get blurred propellers or helicopter rotors at shutter speeds below 1/500 second, and even slower is better. Unfortunately, if shooting with a telephoto lens, it’s then difficult to get the airframe sharp because of camera shake. So the best practice with the slow shutter speeds is to do the best you can with panning.

Now for jets, there are no propellers, so go for as fast a shutter speed as the ambient light levels will allow.

Fat Albert

Vapor Trails

The wing of an aircraft creates lift by creating a low pressure area above the wing. When air pressure decreases rapidly, moisture in the air condenses. This makes for mist trailing away from the aircraft, especially when it's maneuvering.

F-16 With a Short Vapor Trail

Filling the Frame

Large aircraft are easier to shoot. They don't move very fast, and they are easy to spot. It doesn't get much bigger than this. It’s also easier to fill the frame with the large object. No one likes to look at a speck of an aircraft surrounded by sky. It’s hard to get too close and have the aircraft appear too large, but if that happens, don’t be afraid to lose the wingtips or tail out of frame.

NASA Delivers Discovery to the Udvar-Hazy Center

Head on a Swivel

Jets, especially the Thunderbirds or Blue Angels, present some specific photography challenges. They're fast. They're loud. They come from unexpected directions. They start out too small in the viewfinder, then they grow rapidly, then they're too big to fit in the viewfinder. Fast shutter speeds are crucial, with continuous focus mode. There's no moving propeller, but the heat mirage and jet blast can make for some interesting shots. Always be looking around after the last maneuver; they’re repositioning for the next maneuver and might come from an unexpected direction.

Blue Angels Take-Off

Helicopters

Helicopters are easier to photograph than fast-movers. They don't generally make violent maneuvers. I like to try to freeze the fuselage but get some motion blur in the rotors. The main rotor spins more slowly than a propeller; slower shutter speeds are needed to blur them.

Helicopter at EAA Airventure

Here's a shot from a crappy overcast day at EAA Airventure in Oshkosh in 2014. This is not a flipped photo; the helicopter is actually upside down at the time of this shot.

Helicopter doing a Back Flip

Equipment

Your smart phone won’t give great results. I love my phone for lots of things; aircraft photography isn’t one of them. I use my phone for lots of shots, and it’s my second camera in lots of circumstances. It’s not up to the job of getting good aircraft in flight shots.

Use a mirrorless or DSLR camera. It doesn’t have to be an expensive professional camera. For good results, you need something that gives you options for exposure control and interchangeable lenses.

Speaking of lenses, your 50mm kit lens won’t do. You need some magnification. For focal length, more is better, but more magnification gets really expensive. 200mm lenses are OK, 300mm is good, more is better.

Tripods: why? Just say no. Good luck keeping a moving aircraft in frame, even if you’re using a gimbal head.

Filters: just say no. Maybe if you’re shooting on an incredibly bright day, then a polarizer or neutral density filter might be useful.