Photography From Airplanes

Geico266

Touchdown! Greaser!
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I've been shooting a little Gopro, but the quality is poor. What setting do you use air to ground?

What have you been taking pictures of and with what?
 
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iphone and it sucks:

Wake Island

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Iwo Jima is out there somewhere:

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Northern tip of Greenland:

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Chasing someone down:

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Caught 'em:

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Some of the guys carry around pretty good setups. Take some amazing pictures.
 
For photos with the GoPro, I put it on 12MP Wide (photo) and 1080@60fps (video) with Protune and Spot turned off. This helps with the resolution and the "dark-to-light". Also I make sure that my center focus is the light intensity that I want, then I get better results.

There is a company that makes some different lenses that is supposed to help as well, but I haven't tried any yet.

Rex that Iwo Jima shot is ridiculously cool!
 
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I've been shooting a little Gopro, but the quality is poor. What setting do you use air to ground?

What have you been taking pictures of and with what?

If you really mean photos, and not video, then gopro isn't your tool. Get a decent camera and open the windows. Shooting a gopro through nasty acrylic will never get you good results.
 
I actually -just- bought one of these:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sony-cybershot-dsc-rx100

and I'm looking forward to trying it out tomorrow. Couldn't find a negative review, DSLR in your pocket (this thing's tiny), 1" sensor so much better images than you'd expect from a compact, full manual control, yada yada. It's going to live in my flight bag. I too got tired of crappy cell phone pics and the full size DSLR is a pain to take along. I'll post pics.
 
SONY A900 DSLR, 24-70mm Carl Zeiss lens.
Try to get a seat at an opening window. If your pilot can fly right seat when only the left seat has an opening window, buy him a good lunch. If you shoot through plexi, hold your auto-focusing camera as close to the plexi as possible to avoid reflection.
Note: Image #2 is a serious crop of image #1, thus lost some sharpness.

HR
 

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Damn... I assume that was hand held. Sharp, considering. What shutter speed? Was there any vibration reduction turned on (whatever sony calls it)?
 
Damn... I assume that was hand held. Sharp, considering. What shutter speed? Was there any vibration reduction turned on (whatever sony calls it)?
ISO 200; 70mm focal length; 1/0000 sec. at f5.0; Resolution(original image) 5986 x 3888. The camera used "Steady Shot" anti-shake built into the body, so that any lens used is motion stabilized(if turned On). Oh, the a/c velocity was about 85 mph.

HR
 
Note: Image #2 is a serious crop of image #1, thus lost some sharpness.

When using pinch zoom on my iPad to compare the two images in two Safari tabbed windows, it looks like a lossy algorithm was applied to the original larger image that wasn't applied to the cropped image. The same area around the derrick in the 5986x3888 image looks like it actaully has less detail than in the cropped image. I can make out tires and car windows on cars in the 2262x1508 image that I can't see at all on the larger image.
 
I fly with a DSLR. It is fast and easy.
Unfortunately I fly in Texas so pretty much endless photos of the horizon.
 
That's very interesting information, not that I comprehend the depth of the technical data within your notes. However, I'd note that the original image did have more finessing than the crop. It seems that, when tweaking a serious crop one can only push the data just so far before creating a sow's ear from a silk purse. Thanks for digging into them with your analysis. Though the accompanying shot was during a different flight, it would have been only seconds after the previous original shot. When looking at this image, the cars are coming off the east end of the bridge, having entered on the west end seen in the original exposure. The bridge below goes from mainland Woolwich to Arrowsic Island. I live on the next island of Georgetown, 5.8sm after the little bridge in this photo. The Kennebec River is under the big bridge; the Sasanoa River is at the left of this picture.

HR
 

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