Shooting Planes: How do I avoid this issue next time?

[beercan]

Hi all,

While sat on the beach last night just before sunset there was an almighty roar and this thing appeared out of nowhere. It banked around and was gone again!

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I managed to fire off a few shots in full auto but it was gone before I had time to think.
What I learned from this is that when put on the spot, I had no idea how to properly catch the shot I wanted!

The plane is too dark, and in most shots the quality is so bad they were discarded.

I managed a couple of edits to make it prettier but I'm still not happy.

What settings would I need to ensure a decent shot please?

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Thanks for looking!

 

[Little John]

I am guessing the bit you want to stop is the plane being a silhouette?
Your camera has metered for the majority of the image which was a nice bright sky, as a result that dark spot in the sky will be under exposed.

Solution? manually expose for the plane, or try spot metering and keep it on the plane but your sky will blow out probably. or use flash ok not gong to work too well with planes but can work well for portraits meter for the background so it is exposed correctly and use the flash to light the subject.

 

[Bernie174]

In those circumstances, you'd be lucky to get a reasonable shot.
Flash, forget. Exp Comp, yes, if you can dial it in quick enough, and sufficiently. All that while making sure the shutter speed is around 1/200th and focusing.......

You could try pointing it at the hills in the back ground, locking the exposure and you might get lucky.

 

[jakeblu]

Not my type of photography but when shooting with a lot of sky and no time to spot meter the dark object I would likely use centre weight metering with an amount of exposure compensation, if its a really bright sky up to 2 stops. I thought I read on here from those who do shoot aviation that they possible use infinity focusing to keep the subject sharp but like I said not my gig hopefully someone who does this will be along soon.

Steve

 

[Mike C]

I had my first go at planes this past weekend. The main things I found helped were to set the EV to +2, try and get the sun out the way, and hope for blue sky. At +2 EV a cloudy sky just blows out, leaving it looking like the plane has been cut out and stuck on a blank sheet of paper. With a blue sky, a quick play with levels and saturation you can get the plane exposed correctly and keep a blue sky. Shutter speed is matched to maintain a bit of prop blur, so jets can have a quick shutter. I shot a chinook and had to have a shutter speed of 1/80 to blur the rotors. I also found out that using RAW is far better than jpeg as you will be doing quite o bit of PP, or at least I did.

 

[Circuit Hero]

If you plan on shooting more aircraft, try to ensure you're on the sunny side (i.e. the side that is lit by the sun) as it will help with your exposure and will make the aircraft pop from the sky.

I'd always opt for matrix metering unless you plan on an extreme close-up as otherwise it will blow the context of the image out. I'd usually always use Shutter-priority mode as a first point of call and then manually adjust my exposure accordingly if necessary (it's very quick to take a shot, check the histogram and dial the shutter up/down a stop as needed). Anything from 1/250s and slower will giv you passable prop-blur.

As it is, in those circumstances, I don't think you've done badly at all.

 

[beercan]

Thanks everyone, some helpful tips I will note and try out.

We're on the South coast so it's really hard to avoid shooting into the sun when at the beach sadly.

I think the problem here was I thought the metering was on spot but was actually on Matrix!

:bonk:

I think I need to practice more!

 

[pentaprison]

You could shoot in raw. This is reckoned to give you the equivalent of +/- 2 stops of exposure adjustment when you process it.

 

[philwillmedia]

That second shot is a cracker - love it.
Lucky or not, good job.