Digital Camera settings for aerial shots

[TangoWhiskey]

I know I should set my focus to infinity, and turn flash off.

What ISO speed should I use? Shutter speed needs to be fast, or it will blur. My Canon A80 has the ability to "save" a specified custom configuration in spot C1 or C2 on the function dial, and I'd like to save a preset for taking aerial shots.

Suggestions? Looking for basic settings that should get decent shots most of the time...

 

[jesse]

The key is to take many pictures.

If I have a place that I want to take an honest decent aerial photo of. You need to do a couple of things.

First off know which angle is going to get you the best shot. Know the position of the sun, If it's behind you.. You'll get some cool shadows.. Or shadows that will suck, It's hard to say.. SOme places look good with shadows.. Others don't.

If you are taking shots into the sun, They won't be worth anything. It's going to either have to be behind you or at high noon.

I'll probably circle a place for a good 20 minutes and take well over 100 pictures, trying different things.

The beauty of digital is you can take as much as you want.

As far as cameras I'll either use a Nikon D100 or my Fuji S5000. The first one is a digital SLR, the second is a "like slr" . I actually prefer the Fuji; the colors seem to be better. Both of them are capable of shooting several frames per second.. which is a nice feature in the world of aerial photos.


My method is try everything.. and machine gun with the camera.

Then go home and look them through. To get them perfect It'll usually take me quite a bit of time in photoshop.

I've never had one method work perfect in all situations.

There might be someone on this forum though with more camera skills then I have. Which wouldn't take much.

 

[gismo]

I know I should set my focus to infinity, and turn flash off.

What ISO speed should I use? Shutter speed needs to be fast, or it will blur. My Canon A80 has the ability to "save" a specified custom configuration in spot C1 or C2 on the function dial, and I'd like to save a preset for taking aerial shots.

Suggestions? Looking for basic settings that should get decent shots most of the time...

What are you taking pictures of? For scenery, a faster shutter works except that in some cameras this will result a bigger aperture and less depth of field. As long as your target is pretty much all the same distance away (IE in focus at infinity) then that's not a problem. One other issue with increased aperture besides the DOF is that shooting thorough windows causes more distortion than with a small aperture.

If you're taking pictures of aircraft in flight, you typically want to use a slow shutter like 1/30th second so that the props register as a circular blur. Of course this requires that you are close enough to allow a fairly short focal length and/or and awfully steady hand and airplane.

 

[TangoWhiskey]

What are you taking pictures of? For scenery, a faster shutter works except that in some cameras this will result a bigger aperture and less depth of field. As long as your target is pretty much all the same distance away (IE in focus at infinity) then that's not a problem. One other issue with increased aperture besides the DOF is that shooting thorough windows causes more distortion than with a small aperture.

If you're taking pictures of aircraft in flight, you typically want to use a slow shutter like 1/30th second so that the props register as a circular blur. Of course this requires that you are close enough to allow a fairly short focal length and/or and awfully steady hand and airplane.

I'm taking pictures of scenery... (or, my wife is!). We're wanting the best "generic" set of settings that will let us point the camera out the window through the plexi and "CLICK" get a half-way decent shot (no blur). I don't care if it's a little too dark or whatever, as long as it's in focus (with focus set to infinity, that shouldn't be too big of an issue). I can clean it up later (lighting, color balance) with photo tools.

Is 400 ISO about right? Then what shutter speed for taking pictures of the ground scenery?

 

[jesse]

Then what shutter speed for taking pictures of the ground scenery?

As fast as you can. What zoom level are you using?

The Canon A80 has a 3x optical zoom. chances are you are using about all of that.

The camera will be using an [FONT=arial,helvetica][FONT=arial,helvetica]aperture of 4.9 at full zoom. Which will trash your depth of field.

I'd set the camera in aperture priority mode. basically this means you set the aperture and the camera will use the fastest shutter speed it can to maintain that aperture.
Play around with multiple aperture settings, then look at those aerial photos and see what the limit is before you ruin the depth of field. Then use that aperture setting from there on out.


Really the problem with a point and shoot like the A80 is the small lens on it. It's not real great for doing things like this. It likes light and a lot of it.


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[RotaryWingBob]

I know I should set my focus to infinity, and turn flash off.

What ISO speed should I use? Shutter speed needs to be fast, or it will blur. My Canon A80 has the ability to "save" a specified custom configuration in spot C1 or C2 on the function dial, and I'd like to save a preset for taking aerial shots.

Suggestions? Looking for basic settings that should get decent shots most of the time...

I generally set for ISO 400, color balance set to sunlight (and then fix the color in Photoshop). I don't find shutter speed particularly critical, except, as Lance said, if you're shooting through the prop.

Color correction is more easily done if your camera can save images in raw mode.

 

[Brian Austin]

In brighter sunlight, I'll use ISO 100 or 200. From the plane, I'll usually shoot aperture priority with f22 or higher for large depth of field. Since that throttles the light to some degree, the shutter speed will be higher.

In lower light conditions, I'll bump it to ISO 400 or 800 and leave everything else as is.

I generally don't shoot through the prop since I fly high wings. Typically, anything over 1/400th of a second will freeze the prop on most planes. Below that will cause some blur. The slower the shutter, the more blur.

One thing to watch for on digitals is noise at higher ISOs. Typically, noise will increase as ISO increases. Canons usually don't exhibit much noise below ISO 400. Noise will usually show up on photos as blurring.

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

What could I have done better on this one? (not an 'aerial shot' but...)
It is with a Olympus 740 3.2Mpx dig camera. I was shooting straight into the sunset and was trying to capture the beauty of the silouette, and no details (that's what my old eyes were seeing anyway) The dig camera can see the stripes and N#.

 

[Iceman]

I know I should set my focus to infinity, and turn flash off.

What ISO speed should I use? Shutter speed needs to be fast, or it will blur. My Canon A80 has the ability to "save" a specified custom configuration in spot C1 or C2 on the function dial, and I'd like to save a preset for taking aerial shots.

Suggestions? Looking for basic settings that should get decent shots most of the time...

You are on the right track!

ISO speed should be 50 or 100 to avoid grain or digital noise that higher ISO's would give you. Most P&S cameras use really small sensors that are pushed to the limit as far as "digital gain" is concerned. You could use a higher ISO but you would need to go back with noise reduction program to make the picture look good.

Your largest concern is shutter speed...you want it as high as you can get it. DOF is not an issue when shooting something in the distance (with nothing of interest between you and the object). As distance increases the DOF will also increase with the same aperture value used. I would never use anything larger than f11 from the plane and normally it is between 5.6 and 8. For your camera use the largest aperture value you can (smallest number).

Is 400 ISO about right? Then what shutter speed for taking pictures of the ground scenery?

It depends what zoom length you use. The 3x that displays on the outside of your camera does not mean anything. What you have is a 35-105mm zoom range. Normally on the ground the shutter speed should at the minium be 1 over the focal length. This means if you are shooting at 70mm (about half zoom) your shutter speed should be 1/70th of a second. Because you are shooting from a high vibration/bumpy environment I would at least double if not triple that number to get blurry free shots.

In brighter sunlight, I'll use ISO 100 or 200. From the plane, I'll usually shoot aperture priority with f22 or higher for large depth of field. Since that throttles the light to some degree, the shutter speed will be higher.

Just to help...

Shutter speed will be lower every time the f value increases.

An aperture of f22 would give you wonderful detal of your wing and the ground but you are cutting your light by A LOT. Every time you increase a stop (f2.8-4, 4-5.6, 5.6-8, etc) you are reduceing the light by 50%. You pictures will look good if you use a low ISO like 100, a high shutter speed like 600+, a medium app of 8, etc.

f22 and larger would be great for shooting sitting down where you want your feet and the mountains (miles away) both in focus

What could I have done better on this one? (not an 'aerial shot' but...)
It is with a Olympus 740 3.2Mpx dig camera. I was shooting straight into the sunset and was trying to capture the beauty of the silouette, and no details (that's what my old eyes were seeing anyway) The dig camera can see the stripes and N#.

IMO...

Lower your ISO...pic has a lot of noise. Turn your camera to Manual mode. Depending on light set shutter on 125 +-50 and aperture to f8-11. Try to take the picture before the sun goes down and place the plane in front of the sun.

However, you have a great picture to work with right now. I would take it to photoshop and reduce the noise, play with the levels to give it a solid "pop", and then mask the sky or copy the plane/ground to another layer and turn them black.

Good luck!

Ok I do not have my normal photoshop but here is a quick fix (of what I think you want) with an old version of photoshop.

 

[gismo]

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Really the problem with a point and shoot like the A80 is the small lens on it. It's not real great for doing things like this. It likes light and a lot of it.[/FONT][/FONT]

Technically, there's no difference between a large lens stopped down to the same aperture as a smaller lens wide open as far as light gathering goes. The larger lens will typically have far less distortion because it's easier to get more precision in the shape of the center of a large lens than the overall shape of a smaller lens.

As to the ASA question, that simply sets the total amount of light reaching the imager for any automatic setting of shutter speed or aperture (assuming you can control either). If you go totally manual, the ASA should only affect the meter reading. Going automatic with a higher ASA will allow a faster shutter with the same aperture (f-stop) or conversely a smaller aperture with the same shutter. The downside is that you won't be using the full contrast range of the imager and therefore will have more noise in the image. If you set the ASA lower than "standard" you will be saturating the imager on bright objects.

 

[Henning]

I'm taking pictures of scenery... (or, my wife is!). We're wanting the best "generic" set of settings that will let us point the camera out the window through the plexi and "CLICK" get a half-way decent shot (no blur). I don't care if it's a little too dark or whatever, as long as it's in focus (with focus set to infinity, that shouldn't be too big of an issue). I can clean it up later (lighting, color balance) with photo tools.

Is 400 ISO about right? Then what shutter speed for taking pictures of the ground scenery?

Set the ISO to 100, then ignore it if you can set your camera manually. Bright day, f 11 @1/250, Kinda overcast f 11 @ 1/125, really overcast f 8 @ 1/125.... You don't need a lot of speed, try to keep it above 1/60th of a second though, preferably over 1/90th if it's bumpy, unless you have a long lens, then don't get slower than the length of lens in mm, ie if you have a 200mm lens, you don't want to shoot less than 1/250 unless you have a stable mount. I'm not really sure why ISO makes a difference with a CCD, but it seems to.