Aviation Photography at Night

Aviation photography at night is very challenging but on the other hand very beautiful and aesthetic photographs can be taken. There are some techniques by which eye-catching pictures can be taken. At night there is not a good amount of light. That’s why night photography is much more difficult than day photography. There are new tools and gadgets which help to focus on a certain angle. Before going into this field, a photographer must have proper training and practice because without practice this mission would be impossible.

At night camera takes a longer time to focus

At night the camera works the same as eyes, when there is less light in the room our eyes take a longer time to focus on a certain object. At night, a camera takes a longer time to focus on the scene due to less light. Just because of this problem most of the time at night your camera will take blurry photographs, unfortunately. So, to capture some good photographs without being blurred the photographer must use a stabiliser and a good lens.

Which Camera is best for night aviation photography?

A DSLR camera will be a great choice if you want to take some mesmerising aviation photographs at night. You must take care of the stability settings of the camera like exposure settings, exposure time and trigger options. There are some settings and techniques which can make a camera more suitable for night photography, for example, use a large and advanced sensor along with a live view factor.

How to stabilise the camera?

Out of all the advanced types of equipment which are used to take good quality pictures, the equipment which firmly holds the camera still has its importance. This equipment is known as a tripod stand. It is used to stabilise the camera so you can take the photographs quite efficiently. When the camera is firmly placed on the tripod stand, you just have to wait for the right time to click.

Find a suitable spot

The first thing which you must do is to choose a suitable place from where you can capture some good aviation photographs. Using a directional pad is very helpful in focusing on the specific angle. We can easily focus on a certain scene by half-pressing the shutter.

Zebra Pattern or Focus peaking

Along with the live view feature, there is another good feature that can be very useful is the zebra pattern also known as focus peaking. This feature is used to highlight the parts of a spot on which the camera is focusing. With the help of focus peaking, we can manually adjust the focus of the camera.

Adjust the Aperture Settings

All the photographers know very well that aperture can play an important role in focusing the aircraft. When we increase the aperture number, we see that sharpness of the photograph increase automatically. But remember adjusting the aperture number after a certain range, the image quality will start to decline so adjust it carefully according to your lens.

Always use RAW Format

At night the proper exposure of the aircraft is very difficult because of the presence of lights of different intensities such as pole lights, aircraft lights etc. Just because of that problem some parts of the photograph are overexpressed. To avoid that problem, take your photo in the file format of RAW. Shooting in raw with over and underexposed parts of the photograph can be recovered with this technique. With the help of the live view feature, you can adjust the angle from where exposure of the aircraft is present in the right amount.