48 SEPTEMBER 2019 ÇPlane&Pilot
telephoto lenses are great if you’re a pro and are looking
to capture images of aircraft flying by, but long lenses are
expensive and hard to use without blurring the shot or
missing it altogether.
In my experience, for general-purpose airplane photog-
raphy, there’s seldom need for anything longer than about
200 mm. Even then, I’d suggest a zoom lens of around
80-200 mm, which is often part of a camera kit package,
along with a shorter wide/normal-range lens. The longer
lens will fill most of your long-lens needs, like capturing
images of planes arriving at the runway threshold, so long
as you’re relatively close.
That said, I seldom even pull my longer lens out of my
bag, instead making use of my 18-135 zoom lens for just
about all of my photography. And this includes air-to-air
work, which I’ve been doing for more than 25 years.
A word of caution here: Air-to-air photography, which
involves shooting an airplane (the subject plane) from
another airplane (known as the camera plane, photo
platform or camera ship) is a very specialized and high-
risk form of work that I’m expressly not discussing here.
Shooting air-to-air in a way that effectively mitigates the
risk requires a coordinated team effort among skilled
crew members, including experienced pilots and pho-
tographers. Don’t attempt it without specialized training
from a professional experienced in air-to-air work. Also, I
won’t specifically discuss taking photos while you’re flying.
Most pilots do it. Pick your moments and be careful. A
good rule of thumb: If you feel at all uneasy about whatyou’re planning to do, don’t do it.
That all said, if you want to experiment with shooting
with long lenses, 400 mm and up, an airshow is a great
place to do it. I recommend borrowing or renting a lens for
the event to avoid acquiring an expensive piece of equip-
ment you might not use much. As I mentioned, they’re
hard to shoot with, especially while hand-holding the
camera. Getting good shots with such lenses takes a lot
of practice and an experienced, steady hand. Even then,
you need to be pretty close to the action, but again, never,
ever violate the flight line or attempt to shoot anywhere
within the runway environment.SKILL
We pilots tend to have a strong sense of ability, which
can work against us when learning certain kinds of
skills. Photography is one of those skills. Taking good
photographs means not only knowing how to adjust the
camera settings to get what you want, but it also means
having a nuanced understanding of the subject matter,
in this case, airplanes. So you’ve got a bit of a head start
on that. Pro photographers will chuckle at saying that
the subject matters because it’s so obvious. Different
kinds of photographic subjects, everything from land-
scapes to portraits, have different characteristics and
so require different techniques and equipment to shoot
effectively. Summer beach scenes are incredibly high in
contrast, which makes it hard to properly expose the
scene. It’s no mistake that almost all cinematography is