[ptman]

Looking to take some awesome shots in Kuaui.

Recognizing that the helicopter (doors off) moves fast and vibrates, I plan to keep my shutter speed at 1/1000. Will be using HD D FA 24-70 f2.8 (full-frame lens on APS-C body, so effectively about 36-105 at f4.2) with auto ISO 100-6400.


Does anyone have other recommendations? I thought I could leave it at TAv to concentrate on composition. Is this a good idea?

All input welcome!

Thanks

[microlight]

Perhaps it might be a little more flexible if you put it in Tv (or HyperP, Tv mode) to allow the camera to balance both ISO and aperture? Or you could indeed use TAv. A high shutter speed would seem to me to be a requirement in a helicopter - especially with the doors off!

[mikeSF]

Also, don't forget to bring a cloth to wipe your lens as it is very very wet up there, especially with doors off.

[dms]

Although not iso invarient I believe the K-3 is close to it--so likely better to stay at a low iso, and fixed aperture and fixed shutter speed. Assuming you are flying during the day I would think iso 100 and 1/4000 at f/2.8, or 1/2000 at f/4 (basically starting slightly less exposure than w/ sunny f/16 rule). That should be fine for anything from overcast to full sun.

If you are flying at night it is a different story--then I think the shutter speed will need to be quite low--hopefully SR will make a big difference, and the resulting night lights need not be very sharp. From my experience with film photography from commercial airplanes I would suggest/guess a fast prime lens wide open (f/1.4 to 1.8), and high iso (as it is the lights and not the dark areas that are important), and moderate shutter speed. Maybe f/1.8, iso 1600, and 1/60s (this because w/ iso 320 slide film I usually used f/1.8 at 1/15 s).

Another consideration is are you doing pp in camera raw? My recommendation is based on using raw, as I have no experience pushing the exposure with jpg's.

BTW the lens wide open is f/2.8 no matter what the sensor size is. This equivalence thing is confusing and often (I believe) about depth of field--which is not a consideration here.

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Last edited by dms; 08-07-2018 at 06:46 PM.

[CDW]

I live in Hawaii and I've done many helicopter and fixed wing flights. 1/1000 will be marginal and some shots will likely be blurred. I always shoot auto ISO, shutter priority at least 1/2000 second.

[Just1MoreDave]

You can probably find someone else's shots from the same operator on Flickr, and look at the EXIF to see what they did and if it worked.

[77me]

My suggestion is to use a wide angle zoom. On Kauai I personally would give up the long end in favor of the wide end. With a lot of the scenery I wanted a wide angle view, especially when flying in to the valleys. When shooting at the wide end you can probably get away with 1/500 shutter speed. On the Big Island where I wanted to zoom in on the lava I used my 70-200 on my K-1. At 200mm I used 1/1500. I set my aperture to the smallest aperture that was giving me ISO values I was comfortable with over the shutter speeds I was using.

I have never had to wipe off my lens, but since they don't take to kindly with things flying out of the helicopter if you bring a cloth, make sure it attaches to something.

[Kerrowdown]

I plan to keep my shutter speed at 1/1000

I'd strongly consider up this... I use faster speeds than this on the ground.