Night Cockpit Photo

[ORDflyer]

Good afternoon all,

I am relatively brand new to photography. I recently purchased a Sony A6300 with a 35 mm lens / 1.8f, a tripod and a shutter remote control. I hope by the way that it is a decent camera.

I am interested to shoot from the cockpit a couple of night exposures at cruising altitude. Our view is often is spectacular and I would like to capture that. The idea I have in mind is to angle the camera so as to see on one side the stars through the side window and on the other side the cockpit instruments and panels.

I want to see if some of you have some good tips. Should the cockpit lighting be set to a minimum? Would the speed of the aircraft (8 miles a minute or so) affect the photo? Should I select because of that a lower than normal shutter speed for that night shot? What would you recommend?

Thank you all.

 

[weepete]

Yes, the movement will probably affect what shutter speed you will be able to use. The trick will be balancing the exposure for indoors and outside while keeping the shutter speed fast enough to freeze the movement of the stars and the ISO low enough to keep noise down to an acceptable level.

Normally you need a pretty dark sky for decent night shots away from any noise pollution and a long shutter speed with a high ISO. If you are moving then you'll need to keep the shutter speed up and just use the ISO to adjust your exposure. Planes have quite a bit of vibration that you may need to counter as well.

One option may be to blend two shots together, one exposed and focused for the stars and the window, another from exactly the same location but focused and exposed for the instrumentation (which would allow you to light it seperatley too.

Ultimately you'll just need to experiment and see if you can get anything to work. Possibly a nice sunset might be easier to balance exposure wise.

 

[Designer]

Yes, I think the instrument lights should be turned down to approximate the light from the stars. Mount your camera on a tripod and select a fairly long shutter speed (maybe 10 seconds or more). For a more precise guesstimate on the settings, search this site for star photography. Get one of these things: JOBY.com Home to clamp to the seat back. Yes, you will probably have some motion blur on the stars, but I think that should be just fine. More important that the instrument lights would be not blurry.