Hey everyone, I'm new to aviation photography. I have a CANON T6 Rebel/ EOS 1300D with a Canon EF 75-300mm 1:4-5.6 lens. I'm relatively close to the aircraft since I have access to the airfield. However, I have no idea what settings I should use in order to get my pictures to look both interesting (for non aviators) and "professional" by aviation photographer standards. Do you guys have any recommended settings, advice/tips to share with me as I embark on this journey?

Thank you, and I appreciate your help.

BluAir242

Composition and light is more important than settings in my opinion to create an interesting image. But try Tv and select a shutter speed short enough to avoid blur. And if taking photos of propeller aircraft, make sure your shutter speed is not too short as you will want a bit of motion blur in the prop.

I would start with the very basics - shoot with the sun behind you and not from too far away. Especially on the apron, heat haze can be a pain if you're too far away from your subject. I usually shoot at F/8 when the sun is out and behind me, I recommend to start with that. To achieve this, just set the camera to Av and select F/8. The shutterspeed will automatically adjust. For propellor aircraft, I'd suggest setting the mode to Tv and selecting a shutterspeed of 1/250.

Feel free to post examples in this thread, we can give you better and more specific advice based on those.

airkas1 wrote:

I would start with the very basics - shoot with the sun behind you and not from too far away. Especially on the apron, heat haze can be a pain if you're too far away from your subject. I usually shoot at F/8 when the sun is out and behind me, I recommend to start with that. To achieve this, just set the camera to Av and select F/8. The shutterspeed will automatically adjust. For propellor aircraft, I'd suggest setting the mode to Tv and selecting a shutterspeed of 1/250.

Feel free to post examples in this thread, we can give you better and more specific advice based on those.

Thank you for the help, and I will post examples shortly. Do I have to worry about aperture? And is it better to shoot portrait or landscape?

BluAir242 wrote:

airkas1 wrote:

I would start with the very basics - shoot with the sun behind you and not from too far away. Especially on the apron, heat haze can be a pain if you're too far away from your subject. I usually shoot at F/8 when the sun is out and behind me, I recommend to start with that. To achieve this, just set the camera to Av and select F/8. The shutterspeed will automatically adjust. For propellor aircraft, I'd suggest setting the mode to Tv and selecting a shutterspeed of 1/250.

Feel free to post examples in this thread, we can give you better and more specific advice based on those.

Thank you for the help, and I will post examples shortly. Do I have to worry about aperture? And is it better to shoot portrait or landscape?

Hi friend,
It is necessary to pay attention to your aperture setting i think. I usually use F8-F9 with shutter speed from 1/400 - 1/640 under sunny condition. It's up to what condition you have when you spot. But i don't recommend you to use too big aperture which means under F7.1 because using bigger aperture might make some parts of aircraft blurry except for night shots i think. In addition, i also do not recommend you to set too slow shutter speed as you are a beginner so it's better to set higher speed so that can make sure the object is clear. All of these things are depended on your spotting condition such as weather ,light condition. Thus, as Kas mentioned before :

shoot with the sun behind you and not from too far away.

And i will sugget you to use Av or Tv first although i am using M now. Tv and Av will adjust other things automatically so that you don't need to care so much.
Besides, i prefer to shhot lanscape at the beginning. But both of Landscape and Portrait are requiring some sapece to turn the level when you edit your photos whcih means that just make sure your composition is ok during spotting so that would be easy for you to edit later.
All in all, practice makes perfect. Trying to take some photos with good condition and edit them. We are glad to give you feedback on your photos.

Cheers,
Harry

HarryLi wrote:

BluAir242 wrote:

airkas1 wrote:

I would start with the very basics - shoot with the sun behind you and not from too far away. Especially on the apron, heat haze can be a pain if you're too far away from your subject. I usually shoot at F/8 when the sun is out and behind me, I recommend to start with that. To achieve this, just set the camera to Av and select F/8. The shutterspeed will automatically adjust. For propellor aircraft, I'd suggest setting the mode to Tv and selecting a shutterspeed of 1/250.

Feel free to post examples in this thread, we can give you better and more specific advice based on those.

Thank you for the help, and I will post examples shortly. Do I have to worry about aperture? And is it better to shoot portrait or landscape?

Hi friend,
It is necessary to pay attention to your aperture setting i think. I usually use F8-F9 with shutter speed from 1/400 - 1/640 under sunny condition. It's up to what condition you have when you spot. But i don't recommend you to use too big aperture which means under F7.1 because using bigger aperture might make some parts of aircraft blurry except for night shots i think. In addition, i also do not recommend you to set too slow shutter speed as you are a beginner so it's better to set higher speed so that can make sure the object is clear. All of these things are depended on your spotting condition such as weather ,light condition. Thus, as Kas mentioned before :

shoot with the sun behind you and not from too far away.

And i will sugget you to use Av or Tv first although i am using M now. Tv and Av will adjust other things automatically so that you don't need to care so much.
Besides, i prefer to shhot lanscape at the beginning. But both of Landscape and Portrait are requiring some sapece to turn the level when you edit your photos whcih means that just make sure your composition is ok during spotting so that would be easy for you to edit later.
All in all, practice makes perfect. Trying to take some photos with good condition and edit them. We are glad to give you feedback on your photos.

Cheers,
Harry

Thanks for the help Henry, what about ISO settings?

For sunny weather, ISO100 will be good.

airkas1 wrote:

For sunny weather, ISO100 will be good.

Thank you Airkas1

BluAir242 wrote:

Thank you for the help, and I will post examples shortly. Do I have to worry about aperture? And is it better to shoot portrait or landscape?

BluAir242 wrote:

Thanks for the help Henry, what about ISO settings?

I'd strongly suggest you do a bit of light reading on the Exposure Triangle. Just search Google, there are tons of websites that explain it quite succinctly. Here's one:

http://photographylife.com/what-is-exposure-triangle

Don't be scared of using ISO200 (or even 400) - not sure about Nikon but Canon have stated that the difference between ISO100 and 200 is practically non-existent. The risk of an unnoticeable amount of extra noise is far more appealing than the risk of a blurry/soft photo! I almost constantly leave all my cameras on ISO200 and only really drop to 100 if my subject either requires wide-angle or is static.

There are some who believe that too fast a shutter can negatively affect an image but I've never seen any evidence to support this theory. It is well known, however, that too narrow an aperture leads to diffraction, especially on higher megapixel bodies. In other words, try not to shoot at above f/11.

Karl

Thanks Everyone, what do you guys edit your pictures in?

Photoshop CS6.

I'm still using a 2006 copy of Photoshop Elements 5.0 and it is more than enough for editing images up to A.net standard. I believe it and a couple of its successors are now available as free downloads.

Lightroom and Photoshop CC

I used to use Photoshop CS6 before but CS6 seems can't support some latest cameras' Raw so i change to use Photoshop CC recently.
And here is an editing guide which could be a reference for you. You can find it in A.net too.
https://www.airliners.net/faq/editing_guide/

HarryLi wrote:

I used to use Photoshop CS6 before but CS6 seems can't support some latest cameras' Raw

I've got the Camera Raw 9.9 plugin (the latest?) if you want it. I couldn't open some RAW files before that either, but everything works now since installing it.
PM me your E-mail and I can wetransfer the file (330MB).

airkas1 wrote:

HarryLi wrote:

I used to use Photoshop CS6 before but CS6 seems can't support some latest cameras' Raw

I've got the Camera Raw 9.9 plugin (the latest?) if you want it. I couldn't open some RAW files before that either, but everything works now since installing it.
PM me your E-mail and I can wetransfer the file (330MB).

Oh that would be so great !!!
I prefer to use CS6 instead of CC. Thank you Kas

Is it ok if some of us other newbies add some photo's with pertinent data for feedback? I'm also trying to understand the ISO vs. aperture thing as I'm brand new to all this and am now using a real camera instead of a smart phone.

Absolutely. That's what this forum is all about

Miguel1982 wrote:

Absolutely. That's what this forum is all about

Sorry, got the forums mixed up. Please create a new "pre-screening" thread with your photos over at the Photography Feedback forum. We'll be glad to help there.

Hey Guys, how do I upload pictures in here so that you can guys can give me your opinions, and tips to improve?

You can upload it to the photo queue. Then go to your photo corner, click on the photo and then right-click on the photo and copy the URL to paste it here.

Wouldn't that cause me to get a negative rating, because it'll be rejected?

Sorry to say this, but it will never get accepted. It's quite blurry, distant, the file is way too big. Just insufficient quality in general.

m0ssy wrote:

Is it ok if some of us other newbies add some photo's with pertinent data for feedback? I'm also trying to understand the ISO vs. aperture thing as I'm brand new to all this and am now using a real camera instead of a smart phone.

Right - so, this is a bit more difficult to explain.

There is a chart here: https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2015/04/h ... n-a-chart/

In the respect of taking pictures of planes, usually you'll use something like F/8.0 and ISO100 or ISO200 in normal daylight conditions and that will be fine.

It's when the light fades, that's when things get tricky because you need to increase your exposure. And you do that by either decreasing the shutter speed (instead of say 1/400sec, you might use 1/100sec). That lets you keep your ISO and aperture as it was, until the shutter speed is slow enough that you cannot easily take photos without blur. That's when you start changing the aperture or the ISO. Opening up the aperture (making the F number lower, eg, going from F/8.0 to F/4.0) will let in more light, but the depth of field might not be as great. If that's the problem, or your lens is already wide open, then you've got to increase the ISO. This has the negative of making your image noisy. I've probably not got this technically totally correct, but with practice you'll start to understand it.

So it's a multi-way balancing act.

Example:



That image needed a low shutter speed (1/100sec), along with F/2.8 aperture and ISO8000 in order to be bright and sharp. But, because it was taken in the dark, it was necessary with the low shutter speed to pan the image. So you follow through with the subject as you are taking the photo. The result hopefully is that the subject is sharp, but the background will get a motion blur which is desirable in this case. Only the pedals and the legs of the rider are not sharp as they are moving in a totally different way to the direction of panning (which was from right to left). The reasoning behind the ISO8000 is because I was stood close to the edge of the track and the rider is coming past at 60km/h - so the shutter speed can't be too low or the image will be blurry. If you are further away, then that's not such a worry.

With your image you've posted, you can see it is blurry, and it is also not framed closely enough. You'd need to have zoomed in more on the plane itself.

You want to zoom in to frame it more closely:



This should make the image more crisp. You'll want to give a little bit of margin around the edges so you can rotate/crop the image as needed to centre it. You want to avoid making big crops of distant subjects, that makes the image look less sharp. Most of the programs will let you put a grid overlay on the image when cropping it so the grid divides the picture up into thirds. You can use that to help guide your cropping, but you should still use your judgement. 1024 pixels wide should be enough to start with. Uploading at larger sizes like 1600 pixels wide makes it much more difficult to get the required quality.

airkas1 wrote:

Sorry to say this, but it will never get accepted. It's quite blurry, distant, the file is way too big. Just insufficient quality in general.

Oh I know lol, was just posting to see how I can improve on that.

This was very helpful thank you!

cpd wrote:

m0ssy wrote:

Is it ok if some of us other newbies add some photo's with pertinent data for feedback? I'm also trying to understand the ISO vs. aperture thing as I'm brand new to all this and am now using a real camera instead of a smart phone.

Right - so, this is a bit more difficult to explain.

There is a chart here: https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2015/04/h ... n-a-chart/

In the respect of taking pictures of planes, usually you'll use something like F/8.0 and ISO100 or ISO200 in normal daylight conditions and that will be fine.

It's when the light fades, that's when things get tricky because you need to increase your exposure. And you do that by either decreasing the shutter speed (instead of say 1/400sec, you might use 1/100sec). That lets you keep your ISO and aperture as it was, until the shutter speed is slow enough that you cannot easily take photos without blur. That's when you start changing the aperture or the ISO. Opening up the aperture (making the F number lower, eg, going from F/8.0 to F/4.0) will let in more light, but the depth of field might not be as great. If that's the problem, or your lens is already wide open, then you've got to increase the ISO. This has the negative of making your image noisy. I've probably not got this technically totally correct, but with practice you'll start to understand it.

So it's a multi-way balancing act.

Example:



That image needed a low shutter speed (1/100sec), along with F/2.8 aperture and ISO8000 in order to be bright and sharp. But, because it was taken in the dark, it was necessary with the low shutter speed to pan the image. So you follow through with the subject as you are taking the photo. The result hopefully is that the subject is sharp, but the background will get a motion blur which is desirable in this case. Only the pedals and the legs of the rider are not sharp as they are moving in a totally different way to the direction of panning (which was from right to left). The reasoning behind the ISO8000 is because I was stood close to the edge of the track and the rider is coming past at 60km/h - so the shutter speed can't be too low or the image will be blurry. If you are further away, then that's not such a worry.

With your image you've posted, you can see it is blurry, and it is also not framed closely enough. You'd need to have zoomed in more on the plane itself.

You want to zoom in to frame it more closely:



This should make the image more crisp. You'll want to give a little bit of margin around the edges so you can rotate/crop the image as needed to centre it. You want to avoid making big crops of distant subjects, that makes the image look less sharp. Most of the programs will let you put a grid overlay on the image when cropping it so the grid divides the picture up into thirds. You can use that to help guide your cropping, but you should still use your judgement. 1024 pixels wide should be enough to start with. Uploading at larger sizes like 1600 pixels wide makes it much more difficult to get the required quality.

BluAir242 wrote:

Oh I know lol, was just posting to see how I can improve on that.

Oops, sorry! Didn't realize.

cpd wrote:

m0ssy wrote:

Is it ok if some of us other newbies add some photo's with pertinent data for feedback? I'm also trying to understand the ISO vs. aperture thing as I'm brand new to all this and am now using a real camera instead of a smart phone.

Right - so, this is a bit more difficult to explain.

There is a chart here: https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2015/04/h ... n-a-chart/

In the respect of taking pictures of planes, usually you'll use something like F/8.0 and ISO100 or ISO200 in normal daylight conditions and that will be fine.

It's when the light fades, that's when things get tricky because you need to increase your exposure. And you do that by either decreasing the shutter speed (instead of say 1/400sec, you might use 1/100sec). That lets you keep your ISO and aperture as it was, until the shutter speed is slow enough that you cannot easily take photos without blur. That's when you start changing the aperture or the ISO. Opening up the aperture (making the F number lower, eg, going from F/8.0 to F/4.0) will let in more light, but the depth of field might not be as great. If that's the problem, or your lens is already wide open, then you've got to increase the ISO. This has the negative of making your image noisy. I've probably not got this technically totally correct, but with practice you'll start to understand it.

So it's a multi-way balancing act.

Example:



That image needed a low shutter speed (1/100sec), along with F/2.8 aperture and ISO8000 in order to be bright and sharp. But, because it was taken in the dark, it was necessary with the low shutter speed to pan the image. So you follow through with the subject as you are taking the photo. The result hopefully is that the subject is sharp, but the background will get a motion blur which is desirable in this case. Only the pedals and the legs of the rider are not sharp as they are moving in a totally different way to the direction of panning (which was from right to left). The reasoning behind the ISO8000 is because I was stood close to the edge of the track and the rider is coming past at 60km/h - so the shutter speed can't be too low or the image will be blurry. If you are further away, then that's not such a worry.

With your image you've posted, you can see it is blurry, and it is also not framed closely enough. You'd need to have zoomed in more on the plane itself.

You want to zoom in to frame it more closely:



This should make the image more crisp. You'll want to give a little bit of margin around the edges so you can rotate/crop the image as needed to centre it. You want to avoid making big crops of distant subjects, that makes the image look less sharp. Most of the programs will let you put a grid overlay on the image when cropping it so the grid divides the picture up into thirds. You can use that to help guide your cropping, but you should still use your judgement. 1024 pixels wide should be enough to start with. Uploading at larger sizes like 1600 pixels wide makes it much more difficult to get the required quality.

Thank you so much for taking the time. :cheers: I had forgotten to log in in quite awhile and missed your reply. My camera doesn't have F stop buttons as it's an older Canon Digital Rebel from a long way back, but I think I can translate and learn. Add in that I'm not yet using a telephoto lense and the challenge is increased. Thanks for the advice!