Model aircraft

Lesco

Lesco

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Tony
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A work friend of mine has asked me if I can go out and photograph him flying his model aircraft, with the nice weather approching I think this is a good idea and a good chance to practise photographing moving objects.

Am I right in saying it will be better to shoot in Shutter priority mode? and how do you achive the plane in view with a blurred background to give the illution of speed? and do I have the lenes to achive all of the above? as I said earlier I have never attempted anything like this before.
 
I've never shot model aircraft - only real ones, but imho, select a shutter speed that will give a crisp capture of the aircraft (with real [prop-driven] aircraft the usual practise is to also get some motion blur of the propeller but I suspect this will be trickier with model aircraft). Saying that, I have also got reasonable results in aperture priority and the camera on manual focus for hyperfocal distance. You might want to set exposure compensation up (or down - I always get that mixed up :eek:) a stop or so to compensate for a bright sky if there's a lot of cloud obscuring/diffusing the sun (or opt for a manual exposure).

To get the motion blur of the background, you need to 'pan' when taking the shot - follow the aircraft with the camera, keeping its position in the viewfinder constant and then take the shot. You might need to select your position and instruct the aircraft controller to get the best background in shot.
 
I have no experience in this but will attempt a partial answer, for blurred background and sharp aircraft you will have to have a fairly slow shutter and a panning action,I am taking that the model will be flown fairly low so you can get the ground in the shot .
Make sure for you're safety the operator is proficient in flying the model, if you take shots with just the sky for background more often than not you will get a blown out sky unless it is very blue.Lens depends on how close you are going to get to the model,but I would use my 70-300 VR.

Right, come on you aircraft Togs, shoot me down.:lol::lol:
 
[edit] Like a bus, there are none for ages, then 3 turn up at the same time!

When I've done similar shots with fast objects, I've used shutter priority, and then the blurred background due to speed effect is done by panning with the subject and selecting a low enough shutter speed to allow the background to blur, but fast enough you can get a relatively sharp shot of the subject.. so good 'panning' is required!

I would start with 1/300th as a baseline and see how well you can pan.. and obviously the background has to be relatively far behind the plane to increase that effect..

For sharp shots (with everything 'stopped in motion' then 1/1000th and upwards is usually the tipping point for fast moving stuff)..
 
I shot some model aircraft a few years ago. It's hard! They move fast, especially jets, and you're quite close to them making panning harder. Harder than photographing full size low flying jets...

As you say, use shutter priority to get the blurred background and blurred prop blades.

It takes a bit of practice, but it's quite satisfying when you get a good shot!

The EXIF is intact on my efforts on Flickr here if you want to see the settings and lens I used.

Good luck!

Jez.
 
Thanks very much guys for you help and advice, Im quite looking forward to my first attempts at this.....
 
Jez, just looked at some of your pics on flickr and they are amazing. Never seen a jet model before and some of them are excellent. Must cost a bomb to make. They pics are hard to tell from real aircraft at times, the perspective's really good on some of those. Well done.
 
Another great indication of why this place is great. Lots of help for an unusual subject and someone who's done it. Nice :thumbs:
 
I tried this once after years of taking real planes. It's much harder in some respects and much easier in others. They move very fast and are (usually) very small so keeping them in the frame is very difficult. Their props are easier than real a/c since they rotate a lot faster so prop blur can be achieved with much faster shutter speeds. I shot a model Spitfire and the prop just started to blur at speeds as high as 1/2000 which'd be hopeless on proper planes.
 
I'd also be tempted to try some PP blur, you can have directional blur for the background, and even radial blur for the props, so could shoot at high shutter speeds to get nice focus and PP to get just the perfect amount of movement..

It's a technique used in motorsport quite often, and I see a guide in the guides section on this site,
http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=353209
 
modchild said:
Jez, just looked at some of your pics on flickr and they are amazing. Never seen a jet model before and some of them are excellent. Must cost a bomb to make. They pics are hard to tell from real aircraft at times, the perspective's really good on some of those. Well done.
Click to expand...

Thank you Stuart!

That yellow jet in particular was incredibly quick - apparently one of those has been measured in a dive at well over 200mph (according to the owner). I only managed to get one half decent broadside shot of it in level flight - and that was more by luck than judgement!

Cheers,

Jez.
 
I had a go at model aircraft a while back - prop driven stuff.

I pretty much treated it like I do for birds in flight. Shutter speed was able to go up above 1/500th and still retain plenty of prop blur - the RPM on the props is pretty high in models. Then a wide aperture to throw the background trees out of focus.
 
These model aircrafts move very fast, you will probably be best to get some good distance between you and the aircraft and use a long lens.
 
I take shots of my father-in-law's model aircraft so that he can still interact with his old modelling friends back in the UK. His are essentially gliders or powered gliders so speed isn't high (he's in his 80's and not looking for excitement)

Looking at the EXIF on most of my stuff, it's in ServoAF with shutter speeds from 1/140 to 1/600 and using 300mm on a 1.3 crop body.
A gallery of some stuff here

Bob
 
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