Nightshots
Just because the sun goes down, doesn’ t mean that you have to pack your bag and head home from the airport. It’ s just a different set of rules, but if you follow some very basic principles, you are in for some pretty dramatic shots. Mark Zerafa shares his experience.
Equipment
The only additional piece of equipment you will need is a sturdy tripod. When choosing a tripod and the associated tripod head mount, make sure that it is rated to carry the weight of your camera and lens.
When mounting your camera on the tripod, wherever possible please mount your lens on the tripod, and not your SLR body. This reduces stresses on the lens mounting ring on your SLR and reduces the possible vibrations of the camera during the actual exposure.
The Right Settings
First of all, there is no perfect camera setting for all nightshots. You will need to select your ISO, aperture and shutter speed depending on every situation you will face:
It is generally agreed that ISO is only to be increased as a last resort. As long as you can achieve a sharp, well-focussed shot using aperture and shutter speed settings at your lowest ISO, please stick to that.
Another possible luxury is a cable- or radio-operated shutter release trigger, but that is very much optional and not really much of a necessity.
The Basics
Nightshots need the exact opposite of what an aviation photographer usually looks for – total lack of movement. Ideally, the aircraft needs to be at a complete standstill. Nothing between you and the aircraft should be moving either, especially vehicles with lights or taxiing aircraft.
The essence of any photograph is to expose your sensor to the right amount of light – not too little( under-exposed result) and not too much( over-exposed result).
There are three factors which determine the amount of light captured by the sensor – aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Aperture is measured in the F-stops on your lens. The lower, the F- Stop number, the more light the lens will let through. The best lenses can open up to F Stops as low as f2.8 or f1.8, but this is not usually an issue with nightshots, as will be elaborated later.
Shutter speed is the duration for which the camera’ s shutter will be open, thus allowing light to hit the sensor. The higher the shutter speed, the less time there is for light to hit the sensor. Shutter speeds are measured as fractions of a second. Thus, Shutter Speed 250 is 1 / 250 of a second, Shutter Speed 1000 is 1 / 1000 of a second, and so on. For nightshots, we will want to go to the opposite side of the range, with most cameras allowing exposures as long as 30 seconds.
ISO refers to the sensitivity of the sensor for light. Set at ISO 400, a sensor will need much less light for a correct exposure than it would need at ISO 100. Most SLRs will have a range from 100 to 64,000. As a general rule, photographers try to use the lowest ISO possible, as image quality is superior at lower ISOs.
Air Malta A319 9H-AEL on a night-time turnaround at Malta International Airport
( Mark Zerafa)