Some settings advice

rikki1q

rikki1q

Suspended / Banned
Messages
140
Name
Rik
Edit My Images
Yes
tomorrow theres a fly past of the battle of britain memorial flight going over derwent damn near me im gonna be going and trying to get a few pictures.

i have a nikon d70s and im gonna be using a 55-200mm lens so any settings advice for taking pictures as the planes fly past?

cheers

rik
 
Forgive me as I'm a Canon user so some terminology may not be 100% consistent with Nikons.

I would recommend using Shutter Priority mode and experimenting 1/250 of a second (and panning with the plane...imagine you are aiming a gun at it), a slower (lower number) shutter speed will give some great panning results, but it's an acquired skill so you'd probably be safer with a higher number to avoid camera shake. Depending on the light, I would also use exposure bracketing to try and get a balanced exposure - if it's bright, the camera is likely to expose for the sky (even if spot metering is selected, as the plane will be small in the finder).

Use autofocus unless you're comfortable with quick manual adjustments, and consider setting it to Ai Servo (or whatever the Nikon equivalent is) so that it is continously adjusting focus.

If need be, turn the ISO up to insure a reasonable depth of field (f8 would be pretty good as you should get the whole of the plane in focus).

Shoot in continous mode, but select RAW as there is likely to be some work needs doing in post processing.

None of this is 100% gospel, but hopefully some good starting points.

Cheers,
James
 
The other day I was randomly shooting small planes near an airfield while waiting for mountain-bikers to ride passed....

Pretty good results with f/5.6, 1/320, ISO 160, but it was a very bright day at around 1pm. Perhaps a faster shutter speed if they're coming in low.
 
i shoot in jpeg generally and the only post production i seem to do is cropping and adjusting the light lvls to some degree in paintshop pro
 
I think shooting at ISO 400 at f5.6 with auto white balance in continuous shooting mode would be a start, i would try Centre weighted metering because to me details on the plane are more important than losing highlights in the sky

Its up to you if you use Aperture or shutter priority, i tend to use Aperture priority most of the time and push ISO if nescassary.

Shooting aircraft is pretty easy, the most important factors are sharpness of image and capturing detail INMO.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top