How to shoot pictures from planes
Friday, January 27th, 2006
A photographer up on flickr asked me how I get such nice images out of plane windows. Here’s the answer I just gave her:
1. Know the kind of plane you’re flying so you can choose a seat relative to the wing. Generally, these days most of us “plebes” sit in coach which means either over the wing or further back. Too close to the wing and you have not only wing but engine exhaust to shoot through (you have this anywhere behind the wing on most jets). The problem is, the closer to the tail you are in the plane, the worse the ride will be and you’re generally near a bathroom or a galley or both. How dedicated are you ;).
2. Know a bit about the route and decide which side of the plane to sit on to get the view you want. Consider time of day and the sun’s position over the time you’re flying. You want the sun on the other side of the plane so as not to flare the image or glare on the window. Knowing the plane will also give you knowledge of the seating layout. Most planes have a 3 and 3 layout which means that seat A is the left window and seat F is the right window.
3. The outside of most plane windows is a hard plastic which, over time gets scratched. If you get a heavily scratched window it will make things harder although not impossible as you’re focusing beyond the window. Also, go to the bathroom and wet a paper towel and clean the inside of the window. Between finger prints and god knows what else it can be pretty grimy.
4. Worst case, move your seat if you can.
5. Carry camera and an assortment of lenses to your seat: do not store them overhead and then bother people putting them up and down. Keep it all with you so you can shoot.
6. Many of my early aerials were with a Canon G3 which I set to “landscape” mode on the mode dial. I could do this with the 20D as well I suppose. The important thing is to not allow the lens to focus on the window and keep the flash off. The landscape setting will do this and more automatically for you or, you can do it manually.
7. If you can’t get a fast enough speed out of the lens on manual, push the ISO high. No need to worry about high quality here, you’re already shooting through plastic. You’re looking for decent quality.
8. I don’t think there’s much reason to shoot in RAW (see above) so I shoot all of this stuff in jpeg.
9. Stop down some from full open as you’re never going to be shooting perpendicular to the ground (unless the plane really banks hard, in which case you’ll probably throw up on the window.
I hope this is useful. Bottom line is that you have to put a bit of effort into planning and when you do of course there will be clouds the entire trip. But, clouds can be interesting too. I’ve also seen some fantastic shots on flickr of plane interiors and the backs of people’s heads.
Good tips. Regarding item 2, you may also want to take into account time of day and where the sunlight will be coming from as this can seriously affect your ability to take good shots, and will determine where shadows will be.
davidn.
David: absolutely. The last batch of shots I took were done either early morning (california) or late afternoon (NY) and the contrast improves tremensously when the sun is low enough to create shadows. Thanks.
[...] hotography
Via Richard’s Notes, he brings the nine things to consider when shooting from planes. This is not something I have [...]
Hi Richard,
After my 6 years as an AF fighter pilot I went to work for Pan Am as a pilot in 1964. As such I had the opportunity to photograph all over the world. Unfortuantely did little of it due to the inconvenience of hauling the equipment around and danger of it getting lost or stolen.
Having the advantage of the front window was nice but in some ways frustrating. Cockpit windows are built to withstand the impact of a chicken at 400 knots and are very thick. The 747 window was a 1″ or so of acrylic sandwiched between two layers of tempered glass.
To minimize the infrared backscatter radiation I used a polarizing filter. Therin lies the rub – it shows all the rainbow like color patterns in the tempered glass due to the internal stresses induced during tempering. (You can also see this in auto glass).
I have tried to get this out of old 35mm slides with Photoshop with minimal results. Your comments are very good regarding passenger windows. There you are shooting through three layers of thinner plastics.
The quality of your shot is amazing. If I were flying today with my little Canon A510 instead of all the heavy crap of the past I would be going nuts and shooting all of the time. Probably better from a “safety” aspect that I am safely retired.
Jim Flint
Jim, great to hear from you and thanks for the comment. I have a retired Contental pilot living near me here in Warren and he’s also enjoyed my aerials and made some of the same comments. He flew DC-10s to London and just could never get the right angle out the front windows.
I’ve dreampt of boeing or airbus designing a plane just for the likes of us with an open floor where we can lay down and shoot straight down. I’d love that. Give me a porthole down and I’ll bring the deck chair!
I’m delighted you enjoyed Land’s End and thanks for the nice comments on it at flickr. I took some more on the way back and I like the way they turned out too but nothing will ever compare to being “dugg!”
Again, thanks for stopping by and do keep in touch, both here and on flickr.
Excellent article, Richard. I have no doubt that these tips will help me greatly on my next trip. You’ve opened up a new dimension to this hobby for me!
Duc Le: Glad to help and I’m looking forward to seeing the results of your use of your considerable skills from a plane.
Great tips, Richard.
I just got back from a short trip from the Twin Cities to Chicago. Poor weather. Not good for picture taking. Maybe next time.
nalts: right, it’s always a crap shoot from a plane: bad seat, bad weather, wrong side, etc. However, sometimes when there’s a thick cloud layer and you pop up through it into the sun there’s a picture waiting to be taken, or, even landing in thick fog at O’hare could be photogenic (and nerve wracking). Anyway, I look forward to our next attempt.
Richard-
So true about popping up over the clouds. I did see some great formations on the way to O’Hare. Funny thing was, I planned out my seating based on my potential flight paths. The small Saab I was on actually goes over my house on the way to the Twin Cities. My boys were waving like mad as they could see me. A bit too many clouds for me to see them, though. From 5,000 feet that would have been a cool shot!
Keep up the nice “window seat” work.
Chris
Thanks Chris, I’ll try. Wish I’d been taking pictures out the window for the last 20 years; I used to fly quite often and to some pretty wild places. Alas, done with that life now. Better late than never I guess.
Thank you for all the advice which is relevant and useful.
Only my question is, should I take RAW or JPEG?
Currently I used Canon 5D. I’ve downloaded and install a custom picture style mode from Canon which is design for the Aerial type.
Picture mode style will only work on JPEG.
However, most of the Gurus say, take photo in RAW and nothing else.
Their reason is you can repair those at post production. If your original picture is not good, then you cannot do much at later stage.
I took some Aerial photo above Rangoon (Burma) with Canon EOS 10D in RAW. Although original was so bad, I’ve managed to recover some with Photoshop.
So, please advice should I RAW or should I JPEG with picture style mode?
Sometime, I go to the end window which is located at the end of the 747 aircraft and take a shot. Nobody there and you can get more concentrations.
Thant: As far as I know, picture styles only work if you’re using Digitial Photo Professional to process your images or are shooting in jpg. I may have that wrong but it’s worth checking into.
Almost all of my aerial shots are done in jpg and the key, for me is a levels adjustment which one can do with either RAW or jpg images.
Most of the images shot through windows show a histogram that’s quite spiked in the middle and the edges are blank. If you drag the left (white) levels control left to squeeze in on the spike, maybe not all the way but close, and do the same to the left, maybe all the way and slightly over the edge of the spike, you’ll noticed a marked increase in contrast on the image.
I’m guessing the information you got rid of on the light side was somehow related to the UV coated windows on planes because when I do this the image goes from dull to clear. The left side increases contrast considerably.
After that, the regular contrast, saturation or desaturation, and sharpening can be applied.
I’m sorry my explanation is so crude, I’m no expert on this stuff and each application: PS, Lightroom, Aperture, iPhoto has different terminology for some of these things.
Believe it or not, most of my early aerials were shot in jpg with a Canon PowerShot G3 and processed with iPhoto.
Play around with this levels idea and see what happens. Let me know if it helps.
I’ve not shot from planes for a while although I do fly regularly. Your comment makes me want to take it up again and hopefully I’ll have a good flying and shooting day in a few weeks when I fly again. Thanks.
Most of the images I’ve taken from airplanes had a strong bluish color cast. Do you use a UV filter? Correct color on the computer?
I do use a UV filter although that’s not doing much as the plane windows are UV coated. Try playing with levels and white balance on your computer, I’m sure it will help.
Perthaps this may be way over the top but if the blue cast is strong enough then a PS action fron adobe site for underwater may help. Search for action Underwater. This was absolutely tremendous for u/w pictures. There is one possible problem in that I know it works PC up to PS8(CS) but not if on later versions or Mac.
Richard: Thank you for your info. You are absolutely right. Picture styles only work in jpeg.
It has two versions which are (1) for the Camera (Custom Picture Style) and (2) for the Software (PhotoShop).
First one is download the Picture Style and install that into Camera as a custom setting.
You must set the Camera to JPEG and custom Picture Style mode.
Second one is take the picture with any desire setting (RAW or JPEG and landscape picture style mode) and apply that picture style in PhotoShop.
My photos are taken in RAW and applied the Level, Colour Balance, Saturation, Contrast and Sharpening.
In fact, there are a lot of interesting things you can get from the plane window.
They are Sunset over the cloud, Snowcap Mountains, another plane from the distance, Ocean and a ship, city night lights and seamless subjects you can get from the different perspective.
http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3998916
http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3885187
Thant, I’m delighted my suggestions might be useful to you.
Your shots look great. Maybe the second one would work better with a slightly longer lens but that’s nit picking, really great work.
I have a category on the sidebar of this site Aerial Photography you might enjoy poking around in if you’ve not.
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the tips. I have not read all the posts but my biggest tip
would be to make sure NOT to use a polarising filter as this makes purple and rainbow type patterns on the photos.
M
Great tip Martyn. i’d say people generally leave filters on lenses when they shouldn’t be (me included) and this is another case of that.
High end lenses are so expensive that we tend to be paranoid about the front element and cover it, even with a high end filter. The problem is, the filter can limit light, cause reflections and get in the way of the full effects of the lens.
So, unless one is trying to change the light (polarize it, for example) filters can be a problem.
And, yes, shooting through plane windows that already have a coating on them, adding a polarizing filter is problematic.
Great tip, thanks Martyn.
When I get the chance, I’ll do as you advised. I wanted to improve my photography skills. Great tips! :)
Hey! How about haze or UV filters? Do they help to get rid of haze?
Thanks!
Otto: No doubt they do but in my experience the biggest problem shooting from commercial planes is not outside haze but window scratches and the UV coatings on newer windows.