Shooting through fences.

Matt Taylor

Matt Taylor

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Matthew
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For many years I have been using a Canon 100-400L to shoot through the fence at Heathrow (from the northern perimeter road) and a few shots end up with bits of the fence largely ruining them but not so many that it was a big issue. My last two visits to the same spot have seen me use a Sigma 70-200 F2.8 as it is better in low light plus the 100-400 is soft at the higher focal lengths and really needs a service. But using the 200mm has resulted in far more shots being ruined by fence encoachment and I'm curious to see if there is a way to mitigate the effect the fences have. Would it be better to use a long focal length as presumably this would probably have no fence in the shot at all?

I want to do some testing of the 100-400 to see if it is still capable of getting good results at longer focal lengths as I cannot really justify getting the service done until the winter which is when the 'season' is over for getting shots from the north side at Heathrow.

Any suggestions welcome please.
 
get as close to the fence as you can, shoot at f2.8 and ensure your focus point is far away (ie on the plane) and the dof should take care of the rest.
 
Shooting through fencing like this....

20110226_183344_2732_LR.jpg


I was able to get shots like this....

20110226_190241_2837_LR.jpg


at 70mm and f/2.8.

This was at 140mm and f/2.8, with close meshed wire fencing, but with the lens touching the fence. I don't remember whether I removed the hood just to get extra close. It's possible that I did....

20110320_162827_5411_LR.jpg


So long as you can get close enough to the fence you should hopefully be OK, especially at longer focal lengths. If you're panning moving aircraft the fence should make itself less obvious. If the sun is behind you then try to shade the fencing to subdue any highlights/reflections. Some people have been known to spray matt black paint at race tracks. It helps.

Problems appear when your aperture is too small and/or you can't get close enough to the fence, such as with this shot at 190mm, f/16....

20080608_151316_5365_LR.jpg
 
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Good advice and examples from Tim.

Interesting how in the fox shot, the fence is invisible in the in-focus areas, but the pattern shows up in the background bokeh.
 
Towards the end of the day I was using F2.8 exclusively, this is an example of one of the last shots I took and the slightly darker area to the right of this image is the fencing.

8876577779_96296dd92d.jpg




This shot shows the fence type involved:

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One of the problems is that to get a decent angled shot it means pointing the the camera at around a 45 degree angle to the fence line, next time I'm there I'll move to a different spot but moving too much just results in a head on shot which isn't really what I'm after. It just seems that the effect has got much worse in the last two visits I've made, and both were using a 200mm vice 400mm.
 
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Those guys above have got the right idea. It's simply a depth of field effect, so shorter lenses and higher f/numbers will make the fence more visible, longer lenses and lower f/numbers less so, and as close to the fence as you can get.
 
Last time I flew into Luton airport saw some blokes at the fences with step ladders to combat this. Did wonder if they would get a visit from airport security or the police in this day and age. No always practical I guess but another option
 
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