Any tips for shooting from a Cessna plane?

[Todd Terry]

These guys actually do the best RC aerial work I’ve ever seen.

I’d LOVE to have one of their helicopters… but they don’t sell them, just rent their services. Their bird will carry a much bigger payload (full-size DSLR with remote controlled gimball and all) than most any other that I’ve seen…

https://www.perspectiveaerials.com/

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Diego Barraza]

Thanks for the input. The lens is a canon 70mm and it has image stabiliser, the pilot says that he has to be 500ft of the ground. My main concern is vibration and being able to pin point and follow the action on the ground: a woman and a child walking around a circle in a big grassland field. I have to shoot out of the rather small cessna plane window.

I plan to shoot at at least 8f stop and maybe 250th of a sec exposure. I have a Fig rig to fix the camera, hand hold it and have a base support with a inflatable rubber ball in my lap.

Its my first aerial shoot, Im a bit nervous and would really like to get it right.

filmmaking-editing-dop-dad

[David Rodwell]

The scenario you describe, photographing a single person from the air, is quite simple.

With a shutter speed higher than 1/1000 and a good size lens, 300mm to 400mm, there should be no technical issues.

The speed of the aircraft is not an issue, nor is focal length or any other technical issues.

The shutter speed will stop any vibrational issues and the lens will be about as large as you can use freehand.

From the standpoint of actually having a recognizable photo of the person on the ground…not likely with most equipment.

David Rodwell
Aerial Photography Academy

[Todd Terry]

[Diego Barraza] “I plan to shoot at at least 8f stop and maybe 250th of a sec exposure.”

Probably not the best choice. Shooting at that high a shutter speed is going to give you very choppy, strobby video. It’s the equivalent of “narrow shutter” shooting in film, where the high shutter speed really freezes the action on every frame and you get that staccato look. That effect is usually used in action films where they want a scene to looks more, well, “actiony.” Sometimes it works well (“Saving Private Ryan”), and sometimes it looks terrible (“Gladiator”).

Your brain actually needs the motion blur to interpret the frames as smooth motion. I think sharp frames are only going to intensify the vibration and instability of the shot.

I’d more suggest shooting with a “normal” shutter if you want a smooth look…. that is, one that mimics a film camera shooting with a 180° shutter. If you are shooting 24fps, that exposure would be 1/48th of a second (or as near to that as your camera will allow. To get that number you basically just double your frame rate. The actual math is “one over twice the frame rate.”

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Diego Barraza]

There seems to be some disagreement about shutter speed, Todd is saying low shutter speed i.e. 50th/sec and David from aerial academy is saying high shutter speed i.e. 1/1000Sec. Is there any consensus on the matter?

Just to clear on what I have available, I cannot change this, this is what I have been set up to use and I have to base my choices on this equipment:

Camera 7D Canon
Good range of lenses from 28mm to 200mm
Cessna 172 plane
Choices of camera mount. Fig rig, tripod or plain handheld (got a Stedycam Merlin, but is out of the question)

The shot: Sweeping shot, the plane comes from west to east following the coastline, Im on the left side of the plane and I am seeing big white cliffs and bits of coast (south coast of England), we go up above the cliff and start turning to the north, where there is a grassy plane on top of the cliff were a woman is walking in a circle. The plane circles above her anticlockwise.

My plan: Camera mounted on fig rig, rubber ball on my lap for support, Shoot with the small window open. Shoot with 70mm, 50th/sec shutter speed, at least 8f stop. Frame where I will not see any of the plane’s rigging and move the camera as little as possible and let the plane do the camera movement.

filmmaking-editing-dop-dad

[Todd Terry]

[Diego Barraza] “There seems to be some disagreement about shutter speed, Todd is saying low shutter speed i.e. 50th/sec and David from aerial academy is saying high shutter speed i.e. 1/1000Sec.”

Well David is right that he says that would yield a good photograph…as he said, “photograph.” As in a still photograph. I’m not sure he knows that you are talking about motion photography.

That high shutter speed will give you sharp images, yes… sharp images that, when stitched together and played back at 24 frames a second… will look very sharp and staccato and stuttery. As I said in my earlier post, if nice smooth motion is what you are after, you should shoot at a more “normal” shutter speed to give you the proper motion blur that your brain needs to interpret everything as nice and fluid. And in the case of 24fps shooting, “normal” would be, yes about a 1/50th shutter.

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

I also just re-read your description of the shot. Have you actually done a “test flight” of this path? If not, I’m not sure you realize how difficult/impossible it would be to pull off a shot like that in a Cessnea, or in any fixed-wing airplane.

Firstly, it sounds like this is all one continuous shot. No room for mistakes. Secondly, I don’t know what your project is, but an airplane can’t simply swoop around in a circle around someone on the ground… at least not quickly. That counter-clockwise circle around your talent would likely take several minutes and even if the plane was as low as possible (500ft AGL), it would still horizontally be a lot lot lot farther away from the talent than that. I mean like a half mile, or more. A 172 can’t spin around in a tight circle like that. It just can’t.

Wrong tool for the job. You are going to either have to get the right tool, or completely re-write the requirements of the shot to correspond with what the equipment you do have can do. That’s all there is to it, and not to be blunt, but talking it to death is not going to force it to happen… if you want usable results.

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Mark Suszko]

“The shot: Sweeping shot, the plane comes from west to east following the coastline, Im on the left side of the plane and I am seeing big white cliffs and bits of coast (south coast of England), we go up above the cliff and start turning to the north, where there is a grassy plain on top of the cliff were a woman is walking in a circle. The plane circles above her anticlockwise.”

I don’t care if Biggles AND Dan Dare are piloting: this isn’t going to work, not in a single pass, and the woman is going to be a tiny shaky blob somewhere in the middle of your frame. Do you even know what the minimum legal altitude is for the grassy plain location? Because to get this shot, you’re going to be below it. And your minimum level airspeed plus a 2-minute turn means you’ll be shooting from more than half a mile away, or using such an extreme bank angle that you’d be in real danger of a stall and crash.

You need a helo for this, or….

Make this a CGI shot, where the camera is magic.
Shoot your singe on a green stage on a turntable or with a circular dolly track. Key her into CGI terrain. or CGI mixed with a wide shot from the plane.

I can’t believe you can’t find an RC plane/helo guy willing to help you for less than the gas and rental on the Cessna.

[Ken Maxwell]

What Todd Terry says, doubled.

One last shot at this:

Since all of the shooting parameters are set in stone, I suggest that you throw you rubber ball away and consider attaching the camera to the wing strut and start/stop it remotely. At lease you will have the camera far enough out to clear any obstacles . . . and the pilot can make the shot.

Please post your video when you make it. I’m sure we could all learn a lot by seeing it.

Good luck,

Ken

[Diego Barraza]

I´m sensing a lot of negativity here. Ok, maybe it won´t be the most stable shot for sure. But I am getting a lot of dramatic no-no-no input.

I am definitely not going to mount the camera on the wing strut.

I know there are a thousand better ways to do this, but my director works on the spontaneus side of things, and just said this is what we have and lets do it. This will happen this Thursday and I was informed only last Friday. I want to do it the best possible wy with what I have available, and that is what will be done. Imposible is not in my line of thought.

Positive input and personal exerience stories welcome. Evagelism of apocalispis please refrain.

filmmaking-editing-dop-dad