West Midlands from the plane.

[Scottish Mike]

I was snapping away on a couple of recent flights from Birmingham to Edinburgh. (One of the flight attendants was very kind and got me a cloth to clean the inside of the window!)

I love the views of meadows and fields from the sky, so thought I'd have a play. Most of the shots failed, but fortuitously I had a photo mag that printed an interview with Alex MacLean where he mentioned some of his specs (Shutter speed at 1/1000 etc) so I used them and definitely had some improvement in my pics.

However, I'm not happy with the sharpness (or lack of). I was shooting with my D3100 and the 55-200mm lens on manual focus, but I feel the 2 meadow shots really lack crispness. Am I missing something in my camera setup, or is this lack of sharpness to be expected taking shots out the window of a plane?


Golf course by Scottish Mike, on Flickr


Meadows by Scottish Mike, on Flickr


Meadows 2 by Scottish Mike, on Flickr

The window didn't like the polarising filter much! And yeah, I know there's the blooming wing in the top right corner. Gutted it's there.

 

[nealeholl]

And yeah, I know there's the blooming wing in the top right corner. Gutted it's there.

You'd have been more gutted it it wasn't!

 

[Carlh]

You're not going to get much better than that from an airplane. Normally isnt it a couple of pieces of plastic, usually misted and manual focus would have had to been used as it would have just focussed on the dirt on the window.

They fine in low res, i.e. what TP is displaying but yes, close up, they're soft but you cant expect much better than that, so good attempt and interesting images if they're not up to your expectations of sharpness. I think you done well

 

[realspeed]

You'd have been more gutted it it wasn't!

That put a smile on my face