Don’t try this at home…

Flyer cover shot with a Nikon D100 and 18 - 70 f/3.5 - 4.5 ‘kit’ lens, copyright; FLYER/Seager Publishing.

Air-to-air photography is very challenging and highly satisfying when you get it right… and absolutely terrifying when it goes wrong. Every professional air-to-air photographer has a story about the day they nearly ‘bought it’. You have to fly very close to get quality images with a natural perspective, and the dangers of flying in close formation are all too real. Accidents do happen: not long ago, two commercial turboprop aircraft – both piloted by professional pilots – collided during an air-to-air photo session, killing all on board.

The truth is the two most important individuals in an air-to-air shoot are the pilots of the camera plane and the subject aircraft. If the pilots cannot hold formation, It doesn’t matter how good the photographer is: you won’t get results worth a candle, and the whole thing becomes very hazardous.

Perhaps the most significant contribution the photographer can make is in briefing the pilots: amongst other things, they need to understand what track to fly for best lighting and agree simple hand signals for fine positioning (up one metre, in one metre etc.)

This cover shot is at least a good example of the safe way to do it. The subject aircraft was flown by the boss of an outfit that employs ex-military instructors and specialises in teaching formation flying and aerobatics. My camera plane – an ex Swedish air force Scottish Aviation Bulldog – was flown by one of those instructors.

The shooting position – kneeling on the rear seat and pointing the camera through the narrow and low aperture of the open rear window – was less than ideal. (Shooting through a Perspex canopy or even side window is not an option: Perspex is far from being glass-clear; the various scratches and imperfections stand out to a surprising degree; and the poor optical quality of aircraft transparencies both distorts and defocuses the image.)

At least the Bulldog’s small window protects the lens from too much buffeting (for this reason, no one uses lens hoods in air-to-air photography). The photographer must avoid leaning or resting upper body, arms and elbows on any part of the airframe – which will be vibrating. You cannot afford to use too slow a shutter speed, because camera shake and aircraft motion will spoil too many images. Nor can you go too high because, as you raise shutter speed above 1/250th, you first reduce the visible propeller arc and than – at around 1/1000th-plus – freeze the blades completely, making the subject aircraft look like it’s gliding with a dead engine!

Generally, the lighting for air-to-airs looks best with the subject aircraft down-sun. Too avoid burning up too much sky, we generally fly a racetrack pattern. The return leg can give the odd contre jour shot, but the cover picture was shot part way round an orbit, flown with the intention of varying the lighting.

The picture was shot on shutter-priority metering, the exposure being 1/200 at f/ 13. I was using a Nikon D100, set to ISO 200 and RAW mode, to give the best possible quality. Evidently, the 6 megapixel D100 give images good enough for magazine cover use, and we once extended a large size/high quality JPEG from a D70 shoot up to a full double-page spread (A3 size), with perfectly satisfactory results. However, no cropping is possible at this degree of enlargement: the 18 - 70 was at full zoom for this shot, and the image is reproduced on the cover at a hair under its full width.

After much experimentation, I have found that Nikon’s relatively cheap 18 - 70 f/3.5 - 4.5 ‘kit’ lens (effectively a 28 - 105, in old money) produces such good results that my 24 and 50 f/1.4 primes generally stay on the shelf. At the wide end, you can show aircraft and landscape, at the tele end, the centre section and cockpit.

Before the Nikon DSLR period, I was a dedicated Leica rangefinder man – just about the only person in aviation using one for professional photography! The extra area visible in the finder can be a bonus when it comes to seeing what’s about to come into the frame (like the Cessna camera plane lift strut that inevitably spoils at least a few shots). However, beside the obvious convenience factor of digital imaging, the way the Nikon’s meter copes with rapidly changing lighting and the way you can verify exposure as the (very expensive and sometimes unrepeatable) shoot is taking place are big advantages to the DSLR.

I should add that, when I am taking pictures for fun, I still use M Leicas and even an old Rolleiflex 3.5F. Film is a marvellous antidote to long days spent at the computer screen… and digital photography!

Philip Whiteman, Editor, FLYER magazine
(philip@flyermag.co.uk)

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