Shooting early in the morning during sunrise or in the evening at sunset can really add interesting lighting to a photograph. But, as with everything with photography, there are trade-offs. Lower light levels mean compensating for exposure by either opening up the aperture, slowing down the shutter speed, or increasing the sensitivity of the sensor, or a combination of all three. All these "corrections" have their drawbacks. Larger apertures, while enabling faster shutter speeds, can create soft edges and vignetting - among other things (looking at the MTF charts for your lenses can be eye-opening). Slower shutter speeds allow more light to the sensor but require the camera to be more stable to eliminate motion blurring. Increasing the ISO or sensitivity of the sensor can enable faster shutter speeds and smaller apertures, but generally brings unwanted noise along for the ride.
Using a tripod to stabilize the camera, like in ground photography, is pretty much out. Not only is it a little impractical in most aerial platforms (small plane, helicopter) but the rigid nature of a tripod transfers the vibration of the engine right to the camera, something we'd like to avoid. Gyrostabilizers can be a big help if you have one. Nice smooth air is great and fortunately that's the kind of air that usually exists at sunrise and sunset. Still, it's not uncommon to have shutter speeds in the 1/30th of a second range and slower and apertures as wide as you can get. Quality glass is a must, but even the best lenses aren't perfect. When you're flying at 80mph at 1,000 feet while holding a heavy camera with a nice, heavy lens and a gyro attached, it's pretty amazing we can get any usable results at all. Here are some examples:
This image was shot at dusk so we could see the lights on the building and parking lot. The lights took forever to turn on (they were supposed to come on early...) so the sun was long gone. Razor sharp at full size.
The baseball diamond lights are very bright, which enabled me to use a faster shutter speed and a smaller aperture. The trade off was that the surrounding areas were under exposed, which actually worked out in my favor for this shot. That's the actual sunset as well, no replacing of skies here!
- Allen
Using a tripod to stabilize the camera, like in ground photography, is pretty much out. Not only is it a little impractical in most aerial platforms (small plane, helicopter) but the rigid nature of a tripod transfers the vibration of the engine right to the camera, something we'd like to avoid. Gyrostabilizers can be a big help if you have one. Nice smooth air is great and fortunately that's the kind of air that usually exists at sunrise and sunset. Still, it's not uncommon to have shutter speeds in the 1/30th of a second range and slower and apertures as wide as you can get. Quality glass is a must, but even the best lenses aren't perfect. When you're flying at 80mph at 1,000 feet while holding a heavy camera with a nice, heavy lens and a gyro attached, it's pretty amazing we can get any usable results at all. Here are some examples:
This image was shot at dusk so we could see the lights on the building and parking lot. The lights took forever to turn on (they were supposed to come on early...) so the sun was long gone. Razor sharp at full size.
The baseball diamond lights are very bright, which enabled me to use a faster shutter speed and a smaller aperture. The trade off was that the surrounding areas were under exposed, which actually worked out in my favor for this shot. That's the actual sunset as well, no replacing of skies here!- Allen
Leave a comment