Pilots and Photography
03-02-2007, 07:13 PM
#1
With The Resistance
Thread Starter
Joined APC: Jan 2006
Position: Burning the Agitprop of the Apparat
Posts: 6,191
Pilots and Photography
Photography for Pilots
I'd like to offer some tips if you would like to take a few pictures of some of the wonderful things we see as pilots.
I like to keep things as simple as possible and try to get the best results with the least expenditure of time, effort and money.
What is a Camera? It's just another tool for communication. A picture is worth a thousand words, or a hundred thousand or it may describe something
in a way that is impossible for words. Ideally such a tool should be easy to use, light and small. We have to drag enough around and don't need to add to the burden.
What is it good for? Recording what you see and making a permanent record. This is useful for the usual things-family, wife/girlfriend, pets, documents, aircraft, weather, landscape, people, places,assembly sequences for mechanical devices, progress,lack of progress, entropy, and a thousand other purposes.
What kind of Camera do I need? Something about the size of an Altoids tin, or maybe twice that. If it isn't large, heavy and expensive it will likely go with you more often. Like life, 90% of it is being there- with a camera.
Being a gear queer is not really the object here, the object is to have a useable camera to take good quality photos with a minimum of effort and as quickly as possible. You may have a different objective and that is fine, it's just not what I do.
A few recommendations:
Inexpensive; Canon A540 or A550
Very Compact: Canon SD800IS
A little larger: Canon A710IS
Captains:Canon G-7
The last three have IS, image stabilization, it makes it easier to get a sharp photo under difficult conditions such as low light or too much coffee. They do this by floating an element of the lens.
These are just some I have direct experience with and can recommend. Not a brand endorsement.
If you already have something that works, go with that. Any digital camera's product life cycle is 2-3 years although it will be serviceable much longer. My list will be out of date in less than two years.
The camera, spare batteries, and an SD memory card of 1-2 GBs is all you need to take 600 to 1000 photos.
A small padded case will protect the whole kit and it all weighs less than half a pound.
All mechanical/electronic devices are a series of compromises, you may prefer to do your own research and by all means get your hands on one before ordering.
Here are two good places for reviews and pricing:
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/cameraList.php
http://www.dpreview.com/
That's the easy part done, but before you do the easy part, think about the not so easy part.
The tough part is getting good results. It's not the arrow it's the archer.
Here I'm going to defer to the experts and gifted amateurs. I am just a hack.
Start here and read the Classic articles, a lot of very good basic info:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech.htm
Here is a place to study the work of the masters, not many aircraft shots, but it will teach you what a really great photo is:
http://www.photo.net/gallery/photocritique/filter
Here is a place for general photo info on a wide variety of subjects:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/index.php
I hope this will save you a little time and effort, there are many other sources of good information and if you need them they are easy to find. These few will get you off to a good start. I wish I had made many more photos earlier in life, but it has never been cheaper or easier to get excellent results than now.
Good luck and good hunting.
jungle
I'd like to offer some tips if you would like to take a few pictures of some of the wonderful things we see as pilots.
I like to keep things as simple as possible and try to get the best results with the least expenditure of time, effort and money.
What is a Camera? It's just another tool for communication. A picture is worth a thousand words, or a hundred thousand or it may describe something
in a way that is impossible for words. Ideally such a tool should be easy to use, light and small. We have to drag enough around and don't need to add to the burden.
What is it good for? Recording what you see and making a permanent record. This is useful for the usual things-family, wife/girlfriend, pets, documents, aircraft, weather, landscape, people, places,assembly sequences for mechanical devices, progress,lack of progress, entropy, and a thousand other purposes.
What kind of Camera do I need? Something about the size of an Altoids tin, or maybe twice that. If it isn't large, heavy and expensive it will likely go with you more often. Like life, 90% of it is being there- with a camera.
Being a gear queer is not really the object here, the object is to have a useable camera to take good quality photos with a minimum of effort and as quickly as possible. You may have a different objective and that is fine, it's just not what I do.
A few recommendations:
Inexpensive; Canon A540 or A550
Very Compact: Canon SD800IS
A little larger: Canon A710IS
Captains:Canon G-7
The last three have IS, image stabilization, it makes it easier to get a sharp photo under difficult conditions such as low light or too much coffee. They do this by floating an element of the lens.
These are just some I have direct experience with and can recommend. Not a brand endorsement.
If you already have something that works, go with that. Any digital camera's product life cycle is 2-3 years although it will be serviceable much longer. My list will be out of date in less than two years.
The camera, spare batteries, and an SD memory card of 1-2 GBs is all you need to take 600 to 1000 photos.
A small padded case will protect the whole kit and it all weighs less than half a pound.
All mechanical/electronic devices are a series of compromises, you may prefer to do your own research and by all means get your hands on one before ordering.
Here are two good places for reviews and pricing:
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/cameraList.php
http://www.dpreview.com/
That's the easy part done, but before you do the easy part, think about the not so easy part.
The tough part is getting good results. It's not the arrow it's the archer.
Here I'm going to defer to the experts and gifted amateurs. I am just a hack.
Start here and read the Classic articles, a lot of very good basic info:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech.htm
Here is a place to study the work of the masters, not many aircraft shots, but it will teach you what a really great photo is:
http://www.photo.net/gallery/photocritique/filter
Here is a place for general photo info on a wide variety of subjects:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/index.php
I hope this will save you a little time and effort, there are many other sources of good information and if you need them they are easy to find. These few will get you off to a good start. I wish I had made many more photos earlier in life, but it has never been cheaper or easier to get excellent results than now.
Good luck and good hunting.
jungle
Last edited by jungle; 03-02-2007 at 07:43 PM.
03-03-2007, 08:02 AM
#2
Administrator
Joined APC: May 2006
Position: C-172
Posts: 8,024
I have a cheapie digital camera and my biggest problem is the little time lag after I hit the button to take a picture. Do you have any suggestions? Can't begin to tell you how many great pictures I've missed. Thanks.
03-03-2007, 08:24 AM
#3
With The Resistance
Thread Starter
Joined APC: Jan 2006
Position: Burning the Agitprop of the Apparat
Posts: 6,191
Another limiting factor is processing speed, the time it takes the camera to record the image and compress it to the file size you are using and this normally includes some refinement depending on the camera. Auto focus may also consume a little time if shifting the focus to another object.
The review sites listed contain extensive data on lag times and capabilities for number of continuous frames per second. You may want to look there and upgrade to something meeting your exact criteria.
Here is an example of the various lags and their effect:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canona710is/page11.asp
And please remember to follow all rules and restrictions:
Last edited by jungle; 01-29-2008 at 04:36 PM.
03-04-2007, 10:41 AM
#4
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Aug 2006
Position: B73N A
Posts: 344
Hey Jungle dont forget to mention SLR (Single refractive lens) cameras. The new Canon Rebel XTi and Nikon D40 make it affordable for average guys to get one....I myself jumped to a Canon 30D (kinda expensive) but no regrets....
03-04-2007, 10:50 AM
#5
With The Resistance
Thread Starter
Joined APC: Jan 2006
Position: Burning the Agitprop of the Apparat
Posts: 6,191
I didn't forget, just trying to gear things for those starting out. If you have the room and fortitude to haul a DSLR around more power to you.
This is a good article about the differences:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/150-...lar-camera.htm
This is a good article about the differences:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/150-...lar-camera.htm
03-09-2007, 12:58 AM
#7
Moderator
Joined APC: May 2006
Position: ATP, CFI etc.
Posts: 6,056
[LEFT]
"SLR" stands for single lens reflex. Once upon a time in a galaxy far far away there was only film in a camera and you used a glass viewfinder to see what you were gonna get rather than an lcd monitor.
Camera makers had only two ways to install this glass viewfinder: one was to mount it to the side with a separate lens of its own, the other was to use the same lens as the film but have a mirror drop down to get you in there. This mirror reflexively popped back up from the lightpath just before the shot by the action of the shoot button. Hence, reflex.
The design was great for amateurs due to being easier to compose shots, but pros thought of them as hobby gear which they originally were. In time the reflex mechanism got smoother and eventually was done away with by the time digicams appeared a year or two ago... geez has it been fifteen years now?? But the name stuck because of the similarity to slrs and in fact some of the actual film slr bodies were adapted to become the new high-end digital cameras and use the same lenses.
Nowadays all digicams are slrs in the sense almost all use the main lens path to show the image before and during shooting, but for some reason only those with removable lenses get the name "SLR". It's little more than an anomoly at this point, but those who struggled with the clunky noisy ones know the term. Only recently have digital slrs seriously equaled film cameras in resolution but purists still prefer film cameras. You only care if you are making big fine art prints, otherwise a 12-megapixel DSLR is pretty darn good.
Camera makers had only two ways to install this glass viewfinder: one was to mount it to the side with a separate lens of its own, the other was to use the same lens as the film but have a mirror drop down to get you in there. This mirror reflexively popped back up from the lightpath just before the shot by the action of the shoot button. Hence, reflex.
The design was great for amateurs due to being easier to compose shots, but pros thought of them as hobby gear which they originally were. In time the reflex mechanism got smoother and eventually was done away with by the time digicams appeared a year or two ago... geez has it been fifteen years now?? But the name stuck because of the similarity to slrs and in fact some of the actual film slr bodies were adapted to become the new high-end digital cameras and use the same lenses.
Nowadays all digicams are slrs in the sense almost all use the main lens path to show the image before and during shooting, but for some reason only those with removable lenses get the name "SLR". It's little more than an anomoly at this point, but those who struggled with the clunky noisy ones know the term. Only recently have digital slrs seriously equaled film cameras in resolution but purists still prefer film cameras. You only care if you are making big fine art prints, otherwise a 12-megapixel DSLR is pretty darn good.
Last edited by Cubdriver; 03-09-2007 at 09:40 AM.
03-09-2007, 01:49 PM
#8
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2007
Posts: 1,285
What is it good for? Recording what you see and making a permanent record. This is useful for the usual things-family, wife/girlfriend, pets, documents, aircraft, weather, landscape, people, places,assembly sequences for mechanical devices, progress,lack of progress, entropy, and a thousand other purposes.
Happy shooting.
