Some general rules:
- if you want good results, forget shooting through plexiglass. (I installed a photo window in my Warrior for my book and Air to air shots of airplanes)
- Use short exposure times whenever possible.
- Use your lens at the f stop where it delivers the best quality (many, even expensive DSLR lenses) perform very badly at many settings
- Use UNDERexposure especially when the sun is shining to avoid highlights without texture. LAter a the computer you can “open” the images again but shoot with -1/3 or even -0.7
- Set the sharpening of your DSLR to normal or even less and do the sharpening on the computer. Photoshop can do it much nicer than the built in software
- Yes, you can use a polarizing filter, but I almost never do …
- most of the HAZE will go away when you correct the exposure with tonal correction but be aware that MANY days are simply too hazy to remove it perfectly. It takes a little practice to use the curves the right way
- neutralize the colors, best by defining WHITE, GRAY and BLACK in the picture. Use white balance, but there’s many other tools that lead to same result (like with all corrections..)
There’s much more to it like camera settings for colors, calibrating your computer screen, using the right color profiles …. It can become very complex once oyu really get into it.
Polarizer through perspex doesn’t work, you’ll get beautiful rainbows in there! If you can, shoot through an open window. As Alex says, shortest exposure possible. Use manual focus – the autofocus on DSLRs tends to ‘hunt’ during aerial shots. Test your lens where the sweet spot is when set to infinte – with most professional lenses this is somewhere around f8, then tape the barrel with gaffer tape so you can’t inadvertently change focus.
I never even tried to use the polarizer through the window :-) But I hate shooting through the window anyway … makes a € 1500 lens produce € 50 quality … I might even install a photo window in the Cirrus
(I installed a photo window in my Warrior for my book and Air to air shots of airplanes)
How do you install one of these? I fly a Archer II
Hi Peter, can you give me one shot in full resolution?
Alexisvc,
Do you mind if I send you one of my (RAW) photos for you to experiment with at your convenience? I used to use a Canon 600D, now a new Canon 70D, and do shoot either with a circular polarising filter, or a UV filter, and sometimes without any filters. I also shoot on TV mode at 1/250 generally, as it avoids ‘wobbly prop’ syndrome. But on a summer high pressure day, with all the editing and use of colour toning and filters in both Lightroom 5.2 and Photoshop elemsts 11 or 12, sometimes I still end up with awful haze. I consider myself to be fairly competent on Lightroom, though less so in Photoshop. Even shooting through the little storm window directly, doesnt reduce it much. I am always grateful for any advice from more seasoned photographers, who I might be able to pick up some tips from.
Hi PiperArcher,
sure send it… but no guarantee :-)
More about the photo window later, i have some photos!
Not much time the next two hours – but be aware that on MOST days there simply IS too much haze! When I did my book about Munich I had to cancel many flights becasue there was too much haze .. but it took me some time to really understand that …
Nice to see an old thread resurrected 
I can’t think of an obvious photo to pick out – I have hundreds of photos that “need doing”.
The pics which appear inline in my trip writeups have usually already been done, using a simple but fairly effective method on Photoshop (CS3) where I manually adjust the three (RGB) curves. The automated way of doing that is Auto Levels but for contrast-limited outdoor shots that usually produces a very crude result. Auto Levels is a useful quick hack for photos taken normally (e.g. pics of stuff on the ground) because it brings out the colours a bit and takes only a second to do.
The pics which appear in the “galleries” in my trip writeups are usually unretouched (I didn’t have the time to do those as well). So that might be a place to find some examples.
Re shooting through a window, I think it depends on how bad the window is. The typical GA rental spamcan has windows which are totally trashed, by decades of people chucking headsets and kneeboards against them, cleaning them with paper tissues, and scraping frost off with an Amex card (personally I prefer a Santander card, in celebration of their “outstanding” customer service). But new windows are fine. My windows are still pretty good after 11 years but that’s only because almost nobody else has ever flown the plane. All scratches I have are from maintenance companies. The biggest problem is with reflections; I now carry a fluffy black rag, about 2ft x 2ft, which I can chuck over anything bright – including the instrument panel if necessary. Wear all black if possible i.e. no bare legs and for best results wear black gloves.
I have come across some super techniques (e.g. David’s one posted higher up) but I need to invest a bit of time to work out how exactly to apply them.
BTW if you think you are an ace in retouching, try this challenge (80MB TIFF – uploading it now). It is one of the best photos ever of a TB20GT. Socata don’t have the original anymore. There is a small version (350k jpeg) here.
Yes, of course – but for editing you need the full resolution picture!
My experience is that NO airplane window has the optical quality needed. I mean I have some € 2000 lenses. Shooting them through plexi glass (of any quality) reduces the quality dramatically.
I’ll download your TIFF and try. For the record: I did not mean to say (and I am not) an “ace in retouchting”. I just DID it for a long time as an aviation photographer. There’s many specialists who can do it much better.
Yes – I think the key thing (if one has no option, which is the case for most of us) is to shoot through a flat part of the window. There is no way to get a half decent result through a curved window. It can be OK for a movie, where a lower quality seems to be generally accepted – this video was shot through the front window which is about the hardest scenario possible. But even that was shot through a fairly flat part of it.
Peter,
the TIFF is somehow corrupted, neither CS5 nor Nikon Capture can open it on my Mac.
It depends on what you need. For a coffeetable photo book as I did it any Plexiglass, curved or not, is not possible. I expeerimented a lot with that and if you look at a 12 MP photo in 100% you see a dramatic difference.
For the magazine covers we always INSISTED on getting a photo plane without window or we removed the door. We would never accept to shoot through windows
I think it has just finished uploading…
