Airborne photos
I would love to have some of those for myself. Who is shooting such pictures – in my case, preferably in Central Europe / Southern Germany? Any idea of the pricing?
You may want to arrange something with a fellow pilot. Take a photo-ship where a window can be opened or one with a clean canopy/window.
Needless to say that both you and the other pilot need some previous experience with formation flying, so you can come up reasonably close which gives best results.
You mention air-to-air. But you can get surprisingly good results doing ground-to-air. You live in Austria and there are some ‘hills’ around. Although it may not seem that way, the pic far right in the EuroGA banner is ground-to-air. Here’s some more from that same spot:
This thread may be of interest.
One has to organise any kind of flight like this, but you don’t need to get close for good results.
The magazine cover type shots are often done extremely close – under 5m in some cases according to one magazine editor – but if you just want a pic of your plane, not necessarily showing the hairs inside the nose of the pilot, a lot is possible with a decent camera (NOT with a phone). Having said that, I have here a really good pic of a C182R which I did with the Nokia 808 phone, at a range of about 50m, but I can’t post it without the owner’s permission.
but I can’t post it without the owner’s permission
Why not? On spotter sites it is done by the thousands…
Yes but this one is a friend of mine. I don’t treat nice people like that.
This one was done at about 100m range, with me on autopilot and him flying past, with a Pentax DSLR and a cheap (200 quid) 50-200mm lens
It’s not mag-cover grade but is good enough.
Actually he has just texted me with the “clear”:
Again, me on autopilot and him flying past. Range maybe 50m. Not bad for a phone, but that was a 40MP camera phone. But decent cameras are cheap these days…
Another reason phones are no good for this is because most of them give nasty prop effects. For some reason the Nokia 808 had a much slower shutter.
That’s a crackin’ photo of the 182 Peter.
flybymike wrote:
That’s a crackin’ photo of the 182 Peter.
Yes, especially since the wing struts are missing! Clearly not airworthy I’d say.
Also, the C182R does not have retractable gear…
Peter wrote:
Another reason phones are no good for this is because most of them give nasty prop effects. For some reason the Nokia 808 had a much slower shutter.
I suspect that smartphones deliberately prioritise high shutter speed over aperture, and therefore depth-of-field, in order to reduce blurring. As you know the high shutter speed is the cause of the nasty prop effects.
An app that permits manual shutter and aperture control is invaluable if you want to do anything creative with a smartphone. Not that phones ever have the greatest quality lenses. A really good, fast lens would cost far more than any smartphone – except perhaps a Vertu.
I suspect that smartphones deliberately prioritise high shutter speed over aperture, and therefore depth-of-field, in order to reduce blurring
Does any phone have a variable aperture i.e. a real physical iris? I have never seen one. (Apart from a weird Samsung one with a massive zoom lens on the back).
the C182R does not have retractable gear
Knowing my aircraft spotting expertise I am doing well not to have confused a 182 with an Antonov 
