Shooting through glass

[PSA DC-9-30]

I'm an aviation buff and I love to shoot planes when I'm waiting around in airports. Depending on the airport and the specifics of the terminal in question, I may plan to arrive a bit early to enjoy more time and have a better chance of seeing something interesting. There are limitations of course, most annoyingly the pane of glass (or TWO panes in terminals with international arrivals) separating me from my subject. Aside from getting a polarizing filter, are there any ways I can improve the quality of my images when shooting through glass? (I also enjoy shooting through airplane windows.)

[Geoff Samuels]

I don't know if there are any tricks to shooting through glass windows but if the glass is tempered (like automobile windows) you probably won't want to use a polarizing filter since that will show the stress patterns in the glass stemming from the heat treatment.

[mahleu]

Get a rubber lens hood, then you can hold your camera against the glass which will stop reflections and also give you a little more stability. A polariser is probably your best bet, or making friends with some ground crew/airport management.

[Paul Kay]

The best results are from shooting square on to the glass. The more oblique the angle, the greater the refraction and softer the images will become. Also get as close to the glass as possible (a rubber hood as mentioned is a good idea so that you can place the camera and lens against the glass which will reduce reflections and vibration - sometimes). If your lens has bright engraving around the front element, use a black pen to cover it or this can reflect on bright days too. I do a lot of aquarium photography which has all the problems of shooting through glass exacerbated by difficult subject matter and flash lighting!

[dalethorn]

I think the very best thing you could do is use a 35mm film camera for those shots, then scan the negatives later.  Avoid all the digital color interpretation and/or RAW conversion tedium.

[dwdallam]

One simple rule: Get as close to the glass as possible and shoot as squarely through it as possible (as someone else mentioned). That's all you can do.

[jjj]

I think the very best thing you could do is use a 35mm film camera for those shots, then scan the negatives later.  Avoid all the digital color interpretation and/or RAW conversion tedium.
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Eh?!  
What's this, random comment time? Especially as the best thing about going digital was to avoid the tedium of scanning negs/slides and then wasting time tweaking them, in order to look as good as they did on film. So time consuming, especially as this is after spending time getting them developed.

[01af]

One simple rule: Get as close to the glass as possible and shoot as squarely through it as possible (as someone else mentioned).[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=196720\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

That's good advice indeed. And furthermore: Do not use a polarizer filter (as someone else mentioned)!

However ... shooting through window glass generally is not a good idea and hardly worth the hassle. The ordinary glass used in windows usually is pretty poor optically and will compromise the image quality substantially. With medium and long telephoto lenses you will even hardly be able to focus properly. So you may be able to get a nice snapshot or two for the family album but hardly anything really worthwhile. I'd prefer shooting from an outdoor view platform, or from the fence around the airport site where the hard-core plane spotters dwell (i. e. when you're not travelling).

-- Olaf

[dalethorn]

True, I wouldn't use film except as a last resort.  I'm just thinking back to LLVJ?? in the slot canyons, where Michael mentions that the digital camera could only capture shades of grey.  Something about the lighting there and the situation described here said "try film".  Are you sure it won't help?

[KevinA]

True, I wouldn't use film except as a last resort.  I'm just thinking back to LLVJ?? in the slot canyons, where Michael mentions that the digital camera could only capture shades of grey.  Something about the lighting there and the situation described here said "try film".  Are you sure it won't help?
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You could take a brick, they can remove all the reflections.

Kevin.

[BlasR]

Much better will be,

 take the glass  out the lens and use the glass from the window.
 you will love it.


BlasR

[dalethorn]

It may be too late to save this, but in fact I've had to do some unusual things to recover or balance colors that were hopelessly mangled by situations like the foregoing.  I've scanned bad prints using scanner software adjustments (when that did a better job in reasonable time than PS), then printed the images and (re)scanned the prints.  It's obviously rare that that would help, but you could spend a couple of days in PS with an image of marginal value to do as well.  How flexible you are just depends....

[PSA DC-9-30]

Thanks for the advice. Shooting through glass is obviously not optimal, but, on occasion it can yield good results. I see it as a challenge, and I am also interested in airport architecture, interiors, bulk flow of passengers through terminals, between sterile and non-sterile areas, ground support equipment, and the whole works. Shooting from behind glass is the only option for much of this unfortunately (except at HNL!)

Here's a real mammoth dug up from Siberian ice and on display (behind glass) at the St. Petersburg (Russia) State University Zoological Museum. I took this photo last July.

[bob mccarthy]

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[jjj]

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It'd probably be confiscated by security before you got to glass though! Esp. Uk Security .

[dalethorn]

Speaking of mammoths, the last time I went to the Pittsburgh museum and got dino pics, I sent the negatives to Kodak and Fuji for processing.  The Kodak colors were way wrong, which makes me glad for digital in yet another way.