It’s been a long time since my last spotting thread. Near the end of 2024 I would like to share my favourite photos among my edits recently. It’s also been a year since I started my aviation Instagram account, time flies quickly. I hope you enjoy these photos.
The livery you won’t see with the same registration anymore, KLM Sky Team PH-BVD, they just removed the livery recently. When will they send the orange pride livery to Taipei again?
For night shot, be as steady as possible. You need to gain as many light as you can, low shutter speed, widest aperture, and iso up to 6400-8000 depends of how much light you can get.
Shutter speed for handheld night spotting is generally around 1/10 - 1/60, depends on how fast is the plane moving. For plane on the runway like this Batik, 1/30 or above would be easier to get the plane in focus. For planes on taxiway, even 1/10 is easy to get sharp image. Remember it is important to get sharp but grainy image instead of bright but blurry picture. Nowadays AI denoise is an awesome tool for night spotting, don’t be afraid of grains.
This photo really isn’t that bad given the conditions, it’s like 80% sharp and 70% in focus. Night spotting is one of those times where the gear actually does matter. I don’t know what you’re using but judging from the apparent shutter speed and noise level I assume it’s a crop sensor. Crop sensors are just difficult to work with at night and they’re best used for long exposures, not moving shots. If you must do action shots with them you basically need to train yourself to be able to hit a consistent 1/20 pan in any spot you go to. What Gua said about prioritizing sharp over non-noisy is true, but at a certain point with crop sensors it’s unfixable. It depends on what you have but generally for a plane without any direct apron/terminal lighting this happens somewhere between 1600 and 6400 on crop sensors. In a lot of airports and with a lot of kit lenses this corresponds to 1/20, maybe even 1/10 at the very most. When I’m shooting night pans I’m normally somewhere in the range of f/5.6 1/10 ISO10000 for reference. This is something that is absolutely trainable but takes a lot of practice and you will cry over a lot of missed photos in the process.
Also, AI Denoise. Absolute lifesaver but it’s only offered on the PC version of Lightroom I believe so consider looking into that if you’re serious about it.
Gua is on an R8 I believe (correct me if I’m wrong) which is a full frame and other members on IFC that you’re seeing doing serious action night spotting, most of us (including me) are on full frames. It’s one of the only times in spotting that gear gives you an inherent advantage. If you’re really serious and looking for an upgrade you can get some low-light beasts for “cheap”. In the US you’re most likely going to be picking between the a7iii, the R8, or the Z6ii. All 3 of them are 1100 ish.
TPE as example, there won’t be any light on the runway after sunset, unless you have good panning skills and good equipments, I would suggest taking advantage of the airport light first. With those annoying strings on the observation deck TPE is certainly not a good place to do pan shots 🥴
@Ord_planespotting if you do want to do night pans with a crop sensor though, I would recommend:
Pick a spot where you have a fence-free side on shot (as in you don’t have to shoot through the fence or you can get over it somehow). Side-on is the best time to hit pans so concentrate your burst there.
If your lens has 2+ image stabilizer figure out which once is for panning (usually mode 2) and use it. If it’s only a single mode, check online to see if it supports panning.
Get there before sunset and do some sunset/golden hour pans to get you locked in. Should be starting around 1/60 and trying to nail down 1/25 or lower before sunset.
Use the fastest burst rate you have. A lot of times you just need volume to get that one sharp shot.
Do not try to follow the plane. Instead, predict where the plane will be (this is also why a warmup is helpful). If you follow the plane you will tend to get behind and do microjumps to get back ahead and it causes a lot of unnecessary blur.
Don’t use your arms, use your torso and keep your arms locked holding the camera. I would generally position yourself to be facing the runway directly so that your torso is completely straight at the side-on shot.
This is hard but try to be as relaxed as possible. Treat every plane like it’s an American E175 or something you don’t care about even if it’s some special or whatever. The tenser you are the more you’re going to do microjumps and shake around.
Learn how to navigate AI denoise and post processing. Especially where crop sensors are concerned learn how to get the denoise artifacts out of the sky (usually by darkening the sky and tinting a bit blue)
Ok maybe it wasn’t just me that was having a hard time taking panning shots, also TPE has no runway lights and other lights on when I went but maybe it wasn’t dark enough idk.
If you haven’t read about the exposure triangle before it’s good to become familiar with it starting out. If you can’t answer what a stop of light is then your at a great disadvantage in trying to achieve better images.
Bro thanks so much. I can comprehend the amount of time you put into this in depth review, I gotta do night planespotting now. Yeah before I would shoot the plane right on it and not like “lead” so then my photos would turn blurry cus I’m shoot directly on it and behind it when the shutter closes. Is AI Denoise only if you shoot on RAW?
