Can you share your experiences shooting MF from moving vehicles including Boat, Aircraft and/or moving 4WD?
What shutter speeds, focal lengths, apertures have you found to produce acceptable sharpness under these types of photography.
Over the next year I will be traveling to a few locations where these will be the platforms available and I am concerned things will be much more difficult without VR or IS type equipment.
In preparation I will be doing some local arial photography for practice but would like a few guidelines to get me started.
Thanks for any suggestions,
Ed
Hi Ed,
The only shutter speed advice is to use the fastest possible for your particular demands. You shoot MF so I assume you are concerned with maximum quality, which means lower ISOs (200 max for film and most backs, maybe 400 for some of the Phase backs (ike p30+, 40+ and 65+)and therefore you will be limited to somewhat lower shutter speeds. If you are around water you might be using a polarizer further aggravating the issue. This makes stabilization essential. With MF your only choice is gyro stabilization. The link to Kenyon labs is in the post right before mine. Farther down the MF forum page there is a topic on shooting gyro from a helicopter. I have a pretty long post there on gyro techniques in challenging situations like you will face. I would post a link but am a forum newbie and the "insert post link" does not seem to be working for me. Look for the post under my name.
When in Alaska one summer, I shot a gyro-stabilized Contax 645 system for 6 days from a self-chartered boat (a trawler for maximun stability) and also from light aircraft. These were from film--Velvia 100 pushed one stop. I used the Kenyon system and it was completely essential. I have aerial shots and shots from the boat in the Alaska gallery of my website
www.guyharrisonphoto.com. I shot focal lengths up to the Contax 210 mm but primarily from 45mm to 120 mm. Some of the boat shots were shot at 1/8 of a second (handheld of course) and the sharpness is still more than professional level. The gyro rental was the best investment I could possibly have made and I still regret that I did not have enough money to buy it.
I will say that shooting from a moving car (4WD so, rough roads?) is almost impossible and I assume the car will be stopped when you shoot or at least rolling on pavement and not off-road.
Hope this helps!
Guy Harrison
