Which lens/lenses for a light aircraft flight

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Dan1502

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Apoligies if I've posted in the wrong place but I wasn't sure where to post this and as the number of viewers on this forum is the highest and I leave in a couple of hours I thought this to be best.

Anyway, I am going on a flight in a light aircraft along the N Wales coast this afternoon and wondered which lenses to take. I have an 11-16, 17-55, 50 and 70 -300.

Thanks

Dan
 
Definitely take your 70-300 for some detailed shots, I expect you'll be flying 2000 to 3000 ft unless your heading for Snowdon where 5000 ft would be better, can't you managed to take all three lenses :thinking:
Look forward to seeing your images.
Going for a little fly myself later this afternoon :)
 
I would say the 11-16 for internal shots of the aircraft in flight (it goes without saying to disable the flash unless you can fly yourself until the pilot gets his vision back!).

The 70-300 would be best for picking out ground detail as in theory at least you should be 500' clear of ground, people or structures as a minimum.

You may find that the 17-55 will cover all bases as you can afford to crop a bit with the 50D?

Sorry I'm not much help but have a nice trip anyway. :)
 
Hope you get some of Llandudno where I am, would like to see what you take. Good luck. Wish I saw this earlier, would keep an eye out for you and take a picture of you flying over!

If I hear a light aircraft come over I will take a pic and then you can confirm whether it was you.
 
That's fine, I was really thinking whether the 17-55 would suffice but am now thinking the 11-16 and 70-300 might be best.

Yes 5000ft over Snowdon rather than 3000ft into Snowdon might be best. Maybe we'll go under the Menai Bridge!

I might take them all but am not sure how much I can take and don't want to be messing about too much.
 
HornetSting said:
Hope you get some of Llandudno where I am, would like to see what you take. Good luck. Wish I saw this earlier, would keep an eye out for you and take a picture of you flying over!

If I hear a light aircraft come over I will take a pic and then you can confirm whether it was you.
Click to expand...

I think we will take off between 3 and 4. I'm not sure how long the flight will be but as we're heading to Caernarfon we should pass over Llandudno.

The pilot is a friends of my parents who has built his own plane (this is the third he's built apparently) - he's a highly skilled perfectionist engineer so all should be ok.
 
It turned out to be a very small cockpit so I could only take one lens and went for the 70-300. The pictures weren't great as I was shooting through perspex, could hardly move the camera without hitting the canopy and most of the time it wasn't all that smooth. I ended up bumping the ISO up to get the shutter speed high with a reasonable aperture and ended up with quite noisy images. To be honest I was way out of my depth with this type of photography and should have given it much more thought beforehand. That said, there's some reasonable snapshots. And the highlight was that we passed a spitfire on the way back! I only realised what it was at the last minute so just grabbed a couple of shots with no set up time and one came out ok. Not good enough to post on here though.
 
Glad you enjoyed it. I recently went on a small flight down in Kent and had the same problem as you but settles on my 70-300 last minute and was glad I did.
 
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