Not sure if anyone has brought this up yet, but shooting from a airplane with a long lens is a very specialized skill set. I personally never go beyond 50mm (35mm format), as the sharpness degrades rapidly from that point on. Often I cannot get a decent image with anything more powerful than 35mm, which is a wide as many point-n-shoot cameras go.

Perfect air conditions where you can trim the airplane with slight head movements are an exception, but how often do you get those conditions? I remember times I could have probably gotten decent images from the airplane with a 300mm lens...and the reason I remember those times is because they were so rare.

Internal camera stabilization systems help a little, but the margins are still very tight. Also, unless you're willing to spend a couple grand for the camera body with advanced stabilization, internal stabilization is somewhat useless for airplane use.

Short of a external gyro-stabilizer ($900~$2800 for reconditioned units...plus you have to figure out how to power them), "long" shots from a airplane are completely impractical almost all of the time.

Folks wanting to take pictures from the airplane would do well to concentrate on good quality wide-angle options and leave any telephoto tinkering for the ground...preferably with a good tripod.

Thank you, BRD, for your iPhone11 post...I didn't know you could do some of those things with 3rd party apps. Hammer is the expert on DSLR camera's for sure...his pictures many times on his site are absolutely superb!

I have oft thought of purchasing a good DSLR for my many aircraft trips--but--there is simply no practical place to have a DSLR camera with reasonably sized lens immediately available when I want it "now" for the view that just presented itself. An iPhone (or of course Android) on the other hand are always immediately available.

As BRD illustrates, the pictures these days one can take rival the quality of that found in many DSLR's (from the air--taking scenery shots). For instance, I took all of these with an iPhone 6s this past summer: http://eaerofab.com/alaska2019top/index.html. As Hammer expertly notes, once on the ground it's a totally different ballgame with a good DSLR.

Hammer wrote:Not sure if anyone has brought this up yet, but shooting from a airplane with a long lens is a very specialized skill set. I personally never go beyond 50mm (35mm format), as the sharpness degrades rapidly from that point on. Often I cannot get a decent image with anything more powerful than 35mm, which is a wide as many point-n-shoot cameras go.

Perfect air conditions where you can trim the airplane with slight head movements are an exception, but how often do you get those conditions? I remember times I could have probably gotten decent images from the airplane with a 300mm lens...and the reason I remember those times is because they were so rare.

Internal camera stabilization systems help a little, but the margins are still very tight. Also, unless you're willing to spend a couple grand for the camera body with advanced stabilization, internal stabilization is somewhat useless for airplane use.

Short of a external gyro-stabilizer ($900~$2800 for reconditioned units...plus you have to figure out how to power them), "long" shots from a airplane are completely impractical almost all of the time.

Folks wanting to take pictures from the airplane would do well to concentrate on good quality wide-angle options and leave any telephoto tinkering for the ground...preferably with a good tripod.

With a small camera shooting with any zoom while moving is tough to impossible. This is because your lower end stuff stops down the aperture the farther out you go, which reduces light, which needs more shutter to compensate.

If you use a true f2.8 lens that holds f2.8 all the way out to 200mm, then it's much easier. My nikon rig with in-body stabilization and a f2.8 70-200 can certainly take pictures of the ground from the air just fine, but it's a beast to handle in the cockpit.

If I'm shooting a picture of another airplane I need smooth air because I want to reduce the shutter down to 1/120 in order to get a nice prop disk, which of course hoses my sharpness.

Lately I've just set the camera to snap as many shots as possible and rip off 20 or more and usually 2-3 are nice and sharp.

schu

Schu - Ditto's

(I use a "ye olde" Canon 1D with 1.4 - 2.8 70-200L for air to air. Usually works out pretty well for at least a couple shots, even on a rougher day.)

I also just got an iPhone 11 and find the camera an amazing point and shoot camera.

Kurt

Depends on what type of photos you want to capture. For me, my i-phone is excellent for very specific types of photos. My personal dislike with my phone is that after a while my pics feel predictable and repetitive. My Canon DSLR takes much higher quality interesting pictures and gives me the option to shoot in RAW. The problem with the DSLR is it weighs a ton and takes up an inordinate amount of space. I absolutely hate using it in the airplane. So to me, neither of them are a great choices for aerial photography. The solution that I found and highly recommend is a mirror-less Sony. I bought the A6400. I keep a 18-55mm and 55-200mm lens with it in the plane. Both camera+lens combos are light weight, have image stabilization, and are fast enough to keep ISO levels reasonable. The A6400's auto focus system is magical. It can track objects by selecting them with the touch screen as well as use face and eye detection for animals and humans. As a bonus, it shoots incredible 4k video with the options of HGL and Slog color profiles. For me its the perfect flying camera.

EDIT: just realized this thread is a few months old, came here looking for similar information and didn't check the date.

At the risk of seeming like I'm just adding to the pile here, I was in a similar dilemna some years ago, I talked to a professional photographer who gave the the EXACT same advice Zzz did... get a small camera that you'll actually take with. I got a Sony Cybershot which has done fabulously well for me, and was pretty inexpensive. Cameras on smart phones weren't as great then, I rarely even bring it out anymore.

I'm currently looking into a better camera, but more because the better half is wanting to dabble in night sky photography, which based on my preliminary research requires a higher end setup.

I was playing with the Camera+2 app on the II the other night. Shutter speed set at 6 seconds (and phone laying on the deck for stability) App says you can shoot in RAW, but I haven't figured that out yet and this was in .jpg. I played with it a bit but I don't think I've ever shot a night image that worked out with a phone before.

CParker wrote:I talked to a professional photographer who gave the the EXACT same advice Zzz did...

We should acknowledge that I am a professional photographer/cinematographer.

I made $12 on Youtube.