aerial photography help D60 - warning big file

It was a nice day with good visibility, so I took off early and grabbed a bunch of aerial photos.I have to say I am a little unhappy - most of them are not as sharp as I would have expected.
Here is one sample :



It is EXACTLY as it came out of the camera. I was a little handicapped by not having anyone to help, so I was flying with one hand and shooting with the other. It looks "OK", but not as good as I was expecting.
Possibilities:
1 - Not in focus
2 - Motion blur (VR was on and shutter speed wasn't low)
3 - Limits of the lens (kit VR lens that comes with the D60)
4 - Unrealistic expectations - maybe my old 717 was better than I thought!

BTW, a few things that don't show up on exif:
Altitude about 1200 feet, about 45 degrees bank, and about 80 knots airspeed.

And no, the window wasn't closed LOL

Thanks all

The photo is overexposed- all of the detail on the white houses and boats is blown out. It also looks like the focus was off. Was the camera on autofocus?

I see in the EXIF that you have the contrast boosted. This probably caused you to lose more highlights than necessary.

All said, not that bad for a single handed shot in a 93 mph breeze!

Arial Photography is not the easiest and requires some expeerimentation to find what works for you. My take is that there is a Focus problem and that you would do better to up the ISO and the aperture to at least f8 and have a faster shutter speed as well. I would not use VR as it is of little use at the speed you are shooting at. You have to cope with the vibration of the aircraft, the ground speed and possible movement in the vertical plane at the same time. You could also try manual focus and set the lens to just off infinity.
Hope my suggestions help
Claude

I had no idea the contrast was boosted. Arghhhhh... Muist have been fooling around in the menus. I really should have shot RAW anyway, but my main computer is down and the laptop takes forever and a day to do RAW. Exposure wasn't my main issue anyways, I can always turn the contrast down and put some negative EV correction in.

FOCUS is my area of concern. My old Sony 717 was utter cr@p at locking focus on anything fast moving, but it took superb aerials at ASA 100 with perfect focus and no motion blur. I am flying a circle around whatever I am photographing, so the relative motion isn't that great. I would expect to get good focus lock on something in daylight that is about 2,000 feet away. According to the DOF calculator, at 55mm, 2000 foot focus point, and F4 the DOF would be from about 120 feet to infinity. It seems to have had to miss by a LOT to get the focus off.
My ideas for what next:

1 - get one of my buddies to fly and try using two hands on the camera and really concentrate on seeing focus lock and also try higher ASA at F8.
2 - if THAT doesn't work, rent a high end Nikon lens and see what that will do.
3 - Buy a better camera (I hope not)

Thanks again for the help

VR can not keep up with light aircraft (especially helicopter) vibration. Turn the VR off and use at least 1/1000 sec. or less Exposure.
--
cgs
WSSA Member #162

Are you saying it makes it WORSE or just doesn't help much?

717 said:

FOCUS is my area of concern.

Click to expand...

As Claude mentioned, I'd set the camera on manual focus, a little short of infinity. (I've found on a number of cameras/lenses that if you turn the focus all the way to infinity, nothing is in focus)

Depending on how much the camera is bouncing around, it may be having trouble locking on something to focus on.

717 said:

It was a nice day with good visibility, so I took off early and grabbed a bunch of aerial photos.I have to say I am a little unhappy - most of them are not as sharp as I would have expected.
Here is one sample :
http://www.dellabarba.com/717/air1.JPG

It is EXACTLY as it came out of the camera. I was a little handicapped by not having anyone to help, so I was flying with one hand and shooting with the other. It looks "OK", but not as good as I was expecting.
Possibilities:
1 - Not in focus
2 - Motion blur (VR was on and shutter speed wasn't low)
3 - Limits of the lens (kit VR lens that comes with the D60)
4 - Unrealistic expectations - maybe my old 717 was better than I thought!

BTW, a few things that don't show up on exif:
Altitude about 1200 feet, about 45 degrees bank, and about 80 knots airspeed.

And no, the window wasn't closed LOL

Thanks all

Click to expand...

When trying to determine the cause of a problem you should try and eliminate as many variables as possible. The biggest one here would be attempting to take a photo single-handed whilst simultaneously trying to fly a light aircraft! Please can you post a landscape shot from your camera using the same settings, under similar lighting, but with above mentioned variable ruled out? That way we can tell if your camera/lens is at fault or if it was just as a result of the challenging shooting conditions.

The camera usually works fine on land or water. The 55-200mm lens has a thing where it losoes track and hunts every now and then, but either lens is usually in focus when it indicates so. The issue is definitely with the airplane or at least with fast moving objects and/or sky backgrounds. Shooting airplanes from the ground and birds-in-flight is also tough to get good focus sometimes.

My aerial photography experience is with film, both 2 1/4 and 35mm with TriX and Kodachrome64 in a helicopter. With SS of 1/1000 sec. or less all of the shots were sharp. Shots with SS of 1/250 and longer looked just like your photo. As for VR stability, I can not imagine it could correct for the high frequency vibration of your aircraft. Also, with 1/1000 sec. SS VR is not necessary. If I had one of those vibrators barbers used after a hair cut in days past, I could check out if VR made things worse. However, to answer you question, I don't know.

--
cgs
WSSA Member #162

I noticed that the aperture was essentially wide open and the ISO was set at 200. It looks to me like you had plenty of light to shoot at ISO 100. That might help a little. That kit lens is not at its sharpest wide open. The sharpness will improve if you stop down to f/8 or so. I think there may be something to the engine vibration theory as well, particularly if you were propping on the door or some other hard point that transmits a lot of vibration to the camera.

This is an interesting thread, thanks for posting.

A couple people mentioned stopping down to f8. If increasing shutter speed seems to be the main solution, I wonder if that's overkill? I mean, everything is far enough away that I'd think f5.6 would work.

I tend to agree. The two problems I see are overexposure and vibration. A faster shutter speed and eliminating vibration from the frame of the aircraft would be my first steps.

I don't share the opinion that vibration was the main cause of the problem although I think it cold have been a contributor. After all, 1/800 is pretty fast to start with. If you study the 18-55mm VR lens reviews, the lens gets a lot sharper when you go from f/5.6 to f/8, especially zoomed in like that. The other thing is, the photo wasn't all that bad anyway. The size displayed is almost a 100% crop.

Edit: Having downloaded the image and studied it, a lot of the problem to me looks like the contrast was cranked up too far.

Cedarhill said:

I don't share the opinion that vibration was the main cause of the problem although I think it cold have been a contributor. After all, 1/800 is pretty fast to start with. If you study the 18-55mm VR lens reviews, the lens gets a lot sharper when you go from f/5.6 to f/8, especially zoomed in like that. The other thing is, the photo wasn't all that bad anyway. The size displayed is almost a 100% crop.

Click to expand...

Yeah, would agree with that. Certainly looks like it could use a little sharpening. There are no signs of sharpening (sharpening halos & co.) yet, so maybe sharpening was set very low in-camera, in which case the shown result would be rather expected...

GoldRingNikkor said:

Cedarhill said:

I don't share the opinion that vibration was the main cause of the problem although I think it cold have been a contributor. After all, 1/800 is pretty fast to start with. If you study the 18-55mm VR lens reviews, the lens gets a lot sharper when you go from f/5.6 to f/8, especially zoomed in like that. The other thing is, the photo wasn't all that bad anyway. The size displayed is almost a 100% crop.

Click to expand...

Yeah, would agree with that. Certainly looks like it could use a little sharpening. There are no signs of sharpening (sharpening halos & co.) yet, so maybe sharpening was set very low in-camera, in which case the shown result would be rather expected...

Click to expand...

No, sharpness was set to Normal - it's all in the EXIF.

Cedarhill said:

I don't share the opinion that vibration was the main cause of the problem although I think it cold have been a contributor. After all, 1/800 is pretty fast to start with.

Click to expand...

Not for high frequency vibrations. Read the post by CGS111 who observed similar softness in images taken from a helicopter when shutter speeds below 1/1000 s were used.

Cedarhill said:

If you study the 18-55mm VR lens reviews, the lens gets a lot sharper when you go from f/5.6 to f/8, especially zoomed in like that. The other thing is, the photo wasn't all that bad anyway. The size displayed is almost a 100% crop.

Click to expand...

It's not almost a 100% crop, it's the fullsize image. But still, at f/5.6 it's softer than normal, if the OP is to be believed, as in response to my question he claimed that landscape shots taken on the ground, under the same conditions, were sharper.

All this leads to the conclusion that the vibrations were the cause of the softness.

were they all shot at f/5.6?? and, all/most at s.s.s of 1/800 or slower??

I'd certainly do the next experiment with aperture of f/8.

When I shoot air shows I try to shoot at f/8 with my Sigma 70-300mm APO-DG macro, since f/5.6 usually yields very 'soft' shots. The Sigma (and many other 'zooms') does much better at f/8 (the 'sweet spot' of the lens).

I wouldn't be all that concerned about ISO at 200 (as opposed to 100) when considering a shot being in sharp focus, though a slower (than 1/800) shutter speed 'might' contribute to a not-so sharp shot (though, I've shot prop planes at air shows at 1/250 of a second (f/8, hand-held, no VR) that were quite sharp.

Just my thoughts/experience...

--
Jim K...just outside Detroit, MI
DeeEighty; DeeFifty; CeeTwentyOneHundred; EffZeeFiveK

http://www.pbase.com/jkorsog
http://motorcityjim.fotopic.net/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/motor_city_jim/

I looked through the EXIF and every shot was done in the "normal" mode, which sets tone (Nikons word for contrast?) and sharpening to AUTO. There is no setting anyplace I can find nor any EXIF that shows boosted contrast. Can you tell me how you figured this out? The only way I can see is to shoot in the VIVID mode or go into the custom mode and do it, neither of which I did.
Thanks!

jgscott said:

I see in the EXIF that you have the contrast boosted. This probably caused you to lose more highlights than necessary.

Click to expand...

You got me thinking ----

On another flight, I used the 55-200mm lens. The light was worse, so I was shooting at around 1/500, F5.6, at ASA400. Those photos look pretty good in comparison. The focus looks pretty much on. Then I went outside and took a photo of a tree down the street with the 18-55 at F5.6 and F8. In both cases, the focus looked poor but a stopsign in the foreground was sharp. I used ViewNX to make sure I was focused on the tree.
So the 18-55 lens doesn't want to focus out to infinity ?????????
I guess I'll send it back to Nikon to see if they can fix it.
Maybe I'll focus it by hand before I do that and see what happens.