Good day IFC! I took some photos about two weeks ago at Los Angeles International Airport during the sunset hours, but barley got around to uploading them today. Let me know which picture(s) are your favorite or look the best!
Disclaimer: I am an amateur photographer/not a pro at taking photos so some of these photos may look bad. I also may have used the wrong lens, using a 300mm lens instead of the 15-50mm one I had in my bag.
United Airlines Boeing 737-800 Landing RWY24R | N77537
Camera: Canon T3 EOS (Yes it is old and I need to upgrade; Any good camera suggestions?)
I had a lot of fun (and impatience) during this spotting session! Hopefully I’ll be able to get some more pictures at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport soon which is where I will be next.
I forgot to mention I’d appreciate if anyone has any tips for getting good, steady and stop-motion shots. I usually leave my camera either on auto, or I will use shutter speed priority mode.
They don’t look bad at all. I think using the 75-300 (or 70-300 idk) was a good choice here. Planes from this angle tend to look really weird with wider lenses.
If you’re not going to spot super regularly shutter priority mode will probably get you through most things. 1/800-1/320 will freeze most things and you should be able to hit with 90-100% success, below 1/125 you’re getting into territory where you’re going to blur stuff if you’re not careful but sometimes this is on purpose (called panning). Would not recommend going below 1/60 if you’re new. If you want to get more serious I would learn manual (it’s easy, plenty of tutorials out there). You can also download a free mobile app like Snapseed or Lightroom Mobile to start learning how to edit.
As for gear, make sure you actually want to get serious before you upgrade. There are options but if you’re just going to do it every once in a while it’s probably not worth. In general spotting gear isn’t a huge constraint, you can get fine photos with just about anything these days. Gear matters when you start shooting in tough situations like low light or fast action, but it can never really replace skill and knowledge behind the camera.
My suggestion would be to use Auto ISO (if possible).
Set the shutter and aperture manually and let the camera handle ISO by itself. At least that’s what I’m doing (with my video camera, because I shoot raw).
And if you’re going to set your aperture manually, f/8 or f/9 is generally standard for spotting (most lenses are sharpest around here and you don’t generally need the more light that f/6.3 or 5.6 would provide). However, if it’s getting dark then it’s absolutely okay to go down to 6.3 and 5.6.
