Sometimes when you are out taking pictures, you find yourself someplace so grand, and expansive that it cant fit into a single photograph. This may be a time to create a panoramic image.
Panorama – an unobstructed or complete view of an area in every direction
-Websters Dictionary
A Panorama is an unbroken view that surrounds you, and a panorama image is a series of pictures taken that covers a large field of view. Once you have those pictures, you combine them together to create one larger photo.
The Oregon Coast
Why Create a Panorama Image?
To capture a large vast expanse that is well beyond what your lens is capable of capturing in a single frame.
Creating a panorama image also vastly increases the pixel count of your image allowing you to print much larger pictures.
You can use a Pano to capture a nice wide shot in case you forget to bring a wide angle lens. A panorama does not have to be a big long image, it can be as few as two images combined together.
How to make a panorama:
Overlap 20-40% – In order for the stitching software to easily line one image up with the next, you need to have some overlap between the two images. After you take the first image, move over to take the next but leave about 20-40% of the first image in the 2nd and so forth.
Left –> Right – I usually try to shoot my pano’s from left to right. One reason is because I can see the pano easier in Lightroom when I am looking at all the photos in the slider view.
Portrait Orientation – When shooting a panorama from left to right, take the pictures in Portrait orientation. This way you will take more pictures and use more pixels to cover the same field of view. This in turn means you can print a much larger image. Perhaps a picture that will cover an entire wall.
Camera Settings:
When you are taking a series of images with the intention of combining them together into a panorama, you want to have the exact same camera settings for every image in the series. Otherwise you will see the lines of where the image was stitched together.
Aperture: F8 – To get a nice sharp image with much of the scene in focus.
ISO: 100 – To get a nice clean image with low noise.
Shutter Speed – Pick a speed that will give you a nice steady shot. Watch out for movement in the scene which could blur if you use too low of a shutter speed.
Manual Exposure – If you have a bright area of the scene, and a darker area in another part of the scene. Find the correct exposures for each area and split the difference. Make sure to shoot in RAW mode so you can pull the most detail out of the shadow and highlight areas as possible.
Manual White Balance – The white balance can easily change as you move your camera across a scene. One
Focus – I will focus about 1/3 into the scene, I will then turn autofocus off so that the focus does not change as I take the series of images.
The Museum of Fine Art, San Francisco California.
Gear:
Camera + Lens – While you can use any lens to create a panorama, I tend to mostly use a mid-range zoom lens in the 24-105mm or 70-200mm range. These longer focal length lenses allow you take many more images to cover the field of view. This allows you to create a very large final image. If i use too wide of a lens, there could be large areas of dead space in the top and bottom of the final image.
Tripod – A tripod can help you create a nice level picture, but it is not necessary. If you use a tripod, make sure you get all 3 legs set so the camera sits completely level. If your tripod is crooked at all, the horizon level will change as you move the camera from left to right and you will end up with a crooked picture.
The Painted Hills in central Oregon.
Nodal Point
As you take more and more panorama pictures, they will start to notice that sometimes those panoramas do not want to be stitched together during post processing. A main culprit of this is that the camera was not pivoted on the Nodal Point (the No Parallax Point)
The Nodal point is the point in the camera lens where the light entering the lens flips upside down. This is similar to how the human eye works. It is at this point where the camera “should” pivot to come out with the best possible images to stitch.
If you pivot the camera at a different point than the Nodal Point, foreground objects can move in relation to background objects. This can later on cause stitching problems because your computer will know that a tree moved from one image to another, and it might find it difficult to stitch that image because of this movement.
One trick you can do is stick your thumb up and set the middle section of your camera lens on top of your thumb, after you take every image, Pivot the camera at this point. No way this is perfect for finding the nodal point, but it is usually good enough.
If you find yourself out wanting to take a panorama image, but you forgot your tripod. You can always take one handheld. As long as you have enough light and you can use a fast shutter speed, it should not be a problem holding the camera.
I have found that starting while you are twisted at your waist, and untwist yourself as you take the pano is the most comfortable way to take the panorama. Trying to do it the opposite way can be more difficult and cause you to get blurry pictures.
Start with your feet facing where you want the pano to end.
Twist at the waist and Point your camera to where you want the pano to begin.
Take a picture, untwist a little bit, take a picture, untwist, picture, etc
Start in a twist, and untwist yourself towards the way your feet are pointing.Mount Hood
Stitching the Pano
There are many different ways to stitch a pano, but for the article I am going to go over how to create a pano using Adobe Lightroom.
While you are in the Develop module within Lightroom, do any necessary edits on the photo. Next highlight all the photos you want to use in your panorama. To do this, select the first picture in the sequence. Hold the shift button on the keyboard and click the last picture in the sequence.
Only when you have several pictures selected at the same does the “Sync…” button appear. Make sure all the check marks are selected. You want all the images to have the exact same edits. Next click the Synchronize button.
Make sure those edits look good in all the pictures in the sequence.
With all the images still selected, right click on them and go to Photo Merge –> Panorama.
Lightroom will work its magic and you should be given a stitched panorama.
The three buttons on the right: Spherical, Cylindrical, and Perspective will each process the image in a different way. Choose whichever one you like the best.
The Boundary Warp slider on the right warps the image to fill in the frame and get rid of the white edges. Sometimes I use the slider, sometimes I do not. It all depends on the image.
When you are satisfied with the settings, click the Merge button. Once complete you will have a newly stitched panorama in your Lightroom image library.
Do any last edits to the image and crop off any white areas on the edges.
Congrats! you just created a panorama image!
Sometimes Lightroom will struggle to stick a panorama. When I have this problem, I try to use the Merge to Panorama in Photoshop option.
Printing a Pano
Because panoramas have an awkward aspect ratio, your printing options are somewhat limited.
Print the entire panorama on one picture
Some print companies offer a panorama option for printing images. But the larger you go, the more expensive these prints will get.
Print the panorama over multiple panels
Many print companies offer the option to print one image over multiple images, and you hang them all up next to each other to create one large image. This option can be much more affordable to print a large image.
Print Companies to look into
All these companies deliver exceptional quality prints, you cant go wrong with any of them. I am not affiliated with any of theses sites in any way.
These companies deliver low quality prints and should be avoided. I wont even link to these sites, sorry.
Shutterfly
Walgreens
Walmart
Snapfish
Willamette Falls in Oregon City, Oregon.
Tips:
Have the main point of interest be towards the center of the image. Don’t have it on the far end of the pano.
Watch out for any moving objects near the edges of your individual images. You do not want those moving objects to be half in one shot, and half in another. It could really be a problem later on when stitching the panorama.
You don’t need an expensive camera to take a panorama. Your smartphone is fully capable of creating a panorama. It is in fact much easier to create a pano with a phone, I just choose to use my DSLR because the image quality is much nicer.
Do not use a polarizing filter when shooting a pano. The polarizer can cause some weird discoloration in the sky that can be a problem during the stitching process.
Try creating a vertical panorama instead of a horizontal pano.
Sigma recently released a new lens in their Art line of lenses, The Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 DG HSM OS. Sigma has had a 24-70 f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM Lens already in their line of lenses, but the new Art series improves on the original in almost every way.
The Sigma Art lenses are optically superior than the non Art lenses. They have a sturdier build quality and protection against the elements.
When Sigma announced the 24-70 f/2.8 Art lens, it caught my attention because I was thinking about adding this focal length to my kit. The reason I never got the Canon 24-70 was because it lacked Image stabilization. But the new Sigma 24-70 2.8 offered Optical Stabilization. This feature along with the track record Sigma has had with the Art lenses sold me. I shelved out my hard earned money and ordered this lens within the first few seconds of it going up for preorder. Lets hope I don’t regret this decision…
Lens Specifications
Price (MSRP)
$1299.00 (LINK)
Focal Length
24mm-70mm
Maximum aperture/Minimum Apertur
F/2.8 – F/22
Lens Mount
Canon, Nikon, Sigma
Image Stabilization
Yes
Autofocus
Yes
Front Element Thread Size
82mm
Weight
2.24 lb (1020 g)
Angle of View
84.1° – 34.3°
Minimum Focusing Distance
37cm / 15in.
Focal Length
24mm-70mm
Features
Optical Stabilization – The included optical stabilization is a clear advantage over the Canon 24-70 f/2.8. The OS provides about 3 stops of stability. I was shooting at 1/15th second without a shaky picture.
Weather Sealing – The lens has weather sealing around the lens mount. This prevents moisture and dust from entering the lens or camera at that place. The “Sports” line of sigma lenses have better sealing than the “Art” line. The sports line has seals around the focus and zoom rings as well, the Art line does not.
Fast Auto focus – A newly redesigned HSM (hypersonic motor) produces 1.3x more torque to move the large glass elements around inside the lens to provide a powerful reliable autofocus. The lens seems to focus fairly quickly even in low light.
The Sigma 24-70 f2.8 Art lens comes with a nice zippered storage pouch, Lens hood, and a 82mm lens cap. The pouch has a loop so it can hang on your belt.
Build Quality
The Sigma 24-70 2.8 Art has a superb build quality. The focus and zoom rings have a smooth weighty feel. They also have a nice rubber grip texture. The autofocus and Optical stabilization switches have a nice snap feel. They are stiff enough to hold their position when they brush up against something or when taking out of your camera bag.
The filter threads feel like they are plastic, so one good knock and you might just break a chunk of that filter ring off.
The lens hood is quite nice. In fact I might prefer the sigma lens hoods over the canon lens hoods. The sigma hood has the the name of the Lens and the focal length imprinted into a nice rubber band around the edge of the hood. The inside of the hood has a ribbed texture to cut down on light reflections. The canon lens hoods have a velvet material on their interiors but those tend to collect lint. The only complaint about hood is it might feel a little thin and less durable than the Canon hoods.
Image Quality
Sharpness – Sigma has been hitting home run after home run with their Art line of lenses. But the 24- 70 does not keep up with the rest of the pack. The corners are somewhat soft when shooting at f/2.8. But this drastically improves when you move on up to around f/4-f/8. Anywhere above that and the IQ begins to degrade again.
In my testing over the past month, I have noticed a lot of chromatic aberration especially towards the bottom of the frame. It is not in every picture, but in high contrast scenes it can appear.
Chromatic Aberration
Notice the pink and yellow Chromatic Aberration along the vertical supports and the knob at the top of the watertower.
The edges of the shadows have green and pink chromatic aberrations along their edges. You can notice it along the building shadow, and along the edges of the girls dress.
Sample Images
Verdict
The Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 DG OS HSM Art Lens is a decent lens, but adding the “Art” label to it means it is in their top class of lenses. Sigma hit some home runs over that last couple of years with the 35mm f/1.4, 50mm f/1.4, and 85mm f/1.4. Those lenses were all Prime lenses but the 24-70 2.8 is a zoom lens, not a prime. but the 24-70 2.8 Art lens does not seem to keep up with the other “Art” lenses. A zoom lens will never be as sharp as a prime lens and the Sigma 24-70 2.8 Art lens is no acceptation.
Image quality suffers sharpness problems, especially the corners of the frame as well as some very noticeable chromatic aberration. The image quality improves as you adjust the aperture from 2.8 to about f8. As you increase it higher, the image quality begins to degrade again.
The lens is also pretty heavy. You are going to feel the extra weight after a day of shooting. The large 82mm front element as well as oversized internal optics all add up to a lens that is about 2.3 lbs (1020 grams). In comparison, the Canon 24-70 2.8 II weights about a half pound lighter coming in at about 1.75 lbs (800 grams).
The Sigma 24-70 2.8 Art lens is a nice lens that can produce some beautiful images, but after having this lens for some time, the flaws have become far too obvious to ignore. I will be selling this lens and will be buying the Canon 24-70 2.8 II.
With a MSRP of $1299, it is not worth settling for average results at a premium price when other brand 24-70 2.8 lenses produce far superior results at a comparable price.
Sigma seems to have really missed the mark with this Art lens. The other Sigma Art lenses have been incredible lenses, its unfortunate that the 24-70 2.8 DG OS HSM Lens did not live up to those expectations. With a MSRP of $1299, it is not worth settling for average results at a premium price when other brand 24-70 2.8 lenses produce far superior results at a comparable price.
When the Canon 7D Mark II was released in 2014, it was missing WiFi. But when the Canon 6D was released in 2012, it included built in WiFi. This disappointed a lot of people who were hoping to have WiFi built into the 7d II. But in September 2016, canon finally released the W-E1 WiFi adapter compatible with the Canon 7D Mark II, 5Ds, and the 5Ds R.
Because I was one of the 7D mkII owners who was disappointed that my camera did not include WiFi, I immediately pre-ordered the W-E1 to add this long missing feature to an otherwise great camera.
The W-E1 WiFi adapter arrived in a basic white box with the card wrapped in bubble wrap inside. It also came with a paper insert with some basic instructions on it on how to setup the WiFi card.
Setup
The 7D II and 5ds and 5dsr all require a firmware update to version 1.1.0 to add the ability to use the W-E1 WiFi adapter. I also downloaded the EOS Utility 3.5.10 to my computer from the same page to update the firmware on my camera. . Link to Firmware and EOS Utility
You must also download the Canon Connect app to your mobile device to be able to connect to the camera. LINK to Apple App Store
When you first setup the WiFi card on your camera, you are given an option to send out a WiFi signal from the adapter, or connect to an existing WiFi signal such as your home WiFi network. I mostly use the mode that sends out a WiFi signal. I primarily use the WiFi card when I am out in the field away from my home WiFi network.
I chose to setup a WiFi signal from the adapter because I will use this card while out shooting than back at home.
The adapter sends out the WiFi signal and displays the pass-code to log into the signal.
Next on your phone or mobile device, you must go to your settings and manually connect to the WiFi signal send out by the adapter. Enter the pass code which is a string of numbers displayed on the camera and pow, you’re connected.
Open the Canon Camera Connect app and it will detect your camera and will allow you to connect to it through the app. You can also connect to the wifi network from your Mac or PC and use the EOS utility software to control your camera from your computer. I was unable to test out this feature because whenever I tried to connect my laptop to the wifi network, I would receive a connection timeout error.
Canon has a couple different apps for you to use on the iPhone. That is where it starts to get confusing. You want to use the App called Canon Camera Connect. There is another app called EOS that also works, but when you start the app, it tells you that EOS is out of date and to use Canon Camera Connect. App Store Link iOS: Canon Camera Connect
Performance
Latency – The Liveview when using the canon camera control app is very quick and responsive.
Setup: – Setting up the W-E1 is a little cumbersome, especially the first time you ever do it. I also have difficulty trying to connect to a network I already setup. I have to delete that preset connection and create a brand new connection every time I want to connect to the camera to the iPhone.
Distance – The range of the W-E1 WiFi adapter is rated at 33 feet. When I tested this, it worked over 33 feet but it started to get glitchy when i moved further until it finally disconnected.
Controls – When the WiFi card is enabled and you are using the Canon Camera Control app to operate your camera, you lose the ability to be able to operate your camera on the camera itself. If you press the shutter release button on the camera. Nothing will happen. Only through the app are you able to fire or control your camera.
Changing Camera Modes – If you spin the control dial to change camera modes from Shutter Priority to Aperture for example, you immediately lose your WiFi connection to the App. So you need to make sure you get your camera settings right before you connect the app.
Does Not Support RAW – If you are a raw shooter, and you go to transfer your RAW images to your phone from the camera, the images are downsized to 1920 x 1280 Jpegs. This is a huge deal breaker for a lot of people out there. This means you can NOT use the WiFi adapter as a legitimate backup strategy. Perhaps in the future the ability to transfer RAW images could be added. But as of right now, it is not possible.
How I plan On Using the W-E1 WiFi Adapter
Easily transfer images to your phone to Edit/Post to social media – Often times I am out taking pictures and I only have my iPhone with me. I had to wait until I got home to post any images to social media. Now I can do it from anyplace I have a cell signal.
Low Angles – When I am shooting macro pictures, I often have my camera way down on the ground or in some awkward position and the lack of a tilting screen on the 7D II means I have to crawl down into an equally awkward position to see the back of my camera. But now the WiFi adapter will allow me to use my phone to see my composition without crawling down onto the ground to see the screen on the back of the camera.
Double Checking my focus – Seeing the Liveview image on your mobile device allows you to double check the focus to make sure it is tack sharp before you take the picture. This will work great for astro photography, landscape, and macro photography.
Video Mode
When the W-E1 WiFi adapter was announced, it was touted to be able to transfer video over wifi. But whatever I try, I have been unable to record/transfer video via wifi. When the Canon 7DII is in video mode, it says WiFi mode is not available. When I already had a video file on my memory card and I attmpted to transfer it to my iphone, it said unable to transfer this file. I am not sure if I am doing something wrong, but so far using the W-E1 for video has been a huge letdown.
Pros:Adds Wifi to the Canon 7D II, 5Ds, and 5Ds R
Wirelessly control your camera.
Transfer images to your smartphone via Wifi.
See your composition on a larger screen
Nice alternative for the lack of not having a tilting screen on the back of the 7D II
Cons:
Does NOT support the transfer of RAW images. The camera downsizes the raw images to 1920×1280 Jpeg when being transferred. You can still shoot in Raw mode but those images stay on the internal memory card only.
The W-E1 does not include internal memory, you are required to use and 2nd memory card to save your images.
You lose the ability to control the camera with the physical buttons. You are required to use the app.
WiFi disconnects when you turn the camera mode dial.
W-E1 Does not include internal memory storage, it looks like an SD card in appearance only.
Adds a feature that should have been included in the 7D II since it was originally released.
Not great for fast paced work. Slight lag in the video feed.
Canon Connect App is clunky and limited. The apps are easily the worst part of using the W-E1 WiFi adapter.
Compatible with the Canon 7DII, 5Ds, and 5Ds-R cameras only.
Verdict
Buy It If You Already Own One of the Supported Cameras – The Canon W-E1 is a neat little WiFi adapter that adds a much needed feature to the Canon 7DII, 5Ds, and 5Ds-R cameras. Canon should have included this ability when the camera was originally released but better late than never. As long as you can get past the fact that you can NOT transfer RAW images to your phone, and If you shoot one of the supported cameras and plan on staying on those cameras, than the W-E1 is worth picking up. The Apps used to control the camera from your mobile phone are clunky and limited. They are the worst part of using the WiFi adapter. I was completely unable to connect my Macbook pro to the wifi adapter so I was unable to use the EOS utility desktop application.
If you like what we are doing over here at Photo Lowdown, and you plan on buying the Canon W-E1 WiFi adapter or anything else from Amazon, than please use this LINK to help support PLD. You will pay the same low price but you will help keep the lights on over here at PhotoLowdown.com
How many times have you gotten all your camera gear together and headed out with the hopes of capturing one of those amazing sunsets only to get skunked? If you are like me, than I am guessing this has happened to you plenty of times.
But as the years have passed by, I have started to develop a sense of what makes for a good sunset, and what factors help a sunset develop. I dont always get it right but I am better at predicting if their will be a great sunset than I could when I started learning photography.
These are the things I look for when I am trying to decide if its going to be a nice sunset or not. When I see the right conditions, I grab my gear and run the door out to see what I can capture.
What Time is Sunset at?
The most important thing about capturing an epic sunrise, is to be at your location ready to capture the sunset when the sun is setting. The easiest and fastest way to figure out what time sunset is to ask Siri on my iPhone. Hold the home button on the iPhone and ask Siri “what time is sunset tonight?” and it will tell you what time its at and the local weather. I do not own an Android phone, but I assume you can do the same thing on your android device.
Check the Weather
Check the weather before you head out to see if the forecast calls for rain to move in ruining any chances of a sunset. Or maybe the clouds will disappear in the afternoon leaving just a big blue empty sky. Check the radar map to see if their is any clouds or rain in the area, and what direction it will be moving.
Clouds
There needs to be clouds in the sky for their to be a good sunset. The clouds provide an object to shine the colors of the setting sun on. If you have too few clouds, their wont be much going on up in the sky besides a small area of color. If there are too many clouds, the sun wont be able to peek through and shine on the clouds. I usually look for anywhere from 25%-80% cloud cover in the sky.
Mount Hood casts its shadow across the sky on an early March morning. As the sun rises into the sky, the shadow will quickly disappear off of the clouds because the angle of the light will change. The shadow will move down across the land until the sun is high into the sky. The clouds are just above the peak of the mountain, just close enough to cast a shadow on. If the clouds were higher, there would be no shadow on the clouds.
Cloud Altitude
The altitude of the clouds can also play a huge role in how the sun shines on the clouds. If you are standing on the ground and you just watched the sun disappear below the horizon, it doesn’t mean that the clouds way up in the sky cant still see the sun. The higher the clouds, the longer after sunset those clouds can still see the sun.
The Changing Colors of a Sunset
As the sun sets or rises, the light has to travel further through the atmosphere. As the light shines through air, particles in the air scatter the blue light leaving mostly reds and yellows. This is why the final moments of a sunset are the most colorful. This is the moment when the clouds will light up red and pink just before the light fades into twilight. The higher the clouds, the closer to twilight they will be lit up. The low level clouds fade first because the earth shadow falls on them before the higher clouds.
The high altitude clouds light up first, and as the earth rotates, the sun rises higher into the sky illuminating the lower level clouds and eventually the ground. This picture was taken right as the high altitude clouds are at their peak color. In just a few moments the color would start to transition into an orange and yellow color as the sun rises.
15 Minutes After Sunset/Before Sunrise
When you go to a popular view-point to watch the sunset, there are usually all sorts of other people there taking pictures. But just as soon as the sun dips below the horizon, the place clears out. Everybody thinks that since the sun has “set”, that the sunset is over. This is wrong. wait 15 minutes and you will see all the high altitude clouds starting to turn pinks and reds until twilight sets in. The same goes for a sunrise, the best light is usually about 15 minutes before the sun rises.
Just Before/After A Storm
Storms bring some very interesting clouds when they are rolling in. And if the timing is right, you can catch the sunset just as the clouds are clearing out or moving in. The sun will be low on the horizon and sometimes there is a gap between the horizon and the clouds above where you can see the sun. This gap allows the sun to shine in and light up the bottom edges of the storm clouds and really create some fantastic sunsets. But be quick, the sun quickly moves through the gap and you missed your chance.
On this particular morning, their was a thick layer of low hanging clouds that socked in the mountain. But right when the sun was rising behind the mountain the clouds parted for just long enough for me to shoot this image. Seconds later the clouds moved back in front of the mountain.
Time of the Year
As the seasons change, so do the sunsets. In the Pacific Northwest some of the best sunrises and sunsets are during the Winter and Spring. As summer sets in the atmosphere has much fewer clouds than those other parts of the year, and when there are not any clouds in the sky, the sunset is just that. The sun sets over the horizon and the sky just gets dim and eventually dark. But in the other seasons with a bit more cloud cover, you are way more likely to get those clouds a lit up all different colors just after sunset.
Turn Around
When most people watch a sunset, 99% of the time they will be looking directly West at the setting sun, but it is not always towards the sun where the best light and colors appear. As the Sun moves to the west so does the color in the sky. If you time it right you will have the sun setting to the West, but to the East will be all the pinks and oranges as those clouds pick up the last sunlight of the day. If you watch for long enough, you will watch all those colors move West through the sky until it dips over the horizon.
The sunrise lit up the clouds on the horizon but not overhead. Zoom in on the band of color to fill the frame with all the glory of an epic sunrise.
Zoom In
Sometimes it will be an epic sunset but only in a small part of the sky. In this picture above, the sky on the horizon is on fire but the sky above me is drab and gray. Zoom in on the small band of the sky that is erupting with color and fill the frame with the sunrise. This might also be a good time to shoot a panorama image.
Go Someplace that always has a great sunset
You can always travel to someplace like Hawaii or Florida that has incredible sunsets all the time. The tropical weather in these locations is always changing and brings together storms followed by sunshine. The perfect ingredients for a great sunset.
Other Resources:
Another source I use is SunsetWX which is a website that uses various factors like Humidity and cloud elevations, etc to predict if their will be a nice sunrise or sunset.
This is the forecast for the entire United States showing blue if their will not be a sunset, and red if you have a good chance of having a nice sunset.
There you have it, these are the things I keep in mind when I am looking out the window deciding if I want to head out and capture the sunset. There is no guarantee that I will catch a spectacular sunset but using these tips usually means it will have some color. So get out there and witness every sunset and sunrise because if you never go out, you are guaranteed to miss every single one. I also want to see your epic sunrise and sunset photos. Head on over to the Photo Lowdown Facebook Page and share your images.
For all of human history people have looked up at the night sky and contemplated Life, the universe, and everything. Space is the last frontier man has yet to explore. There is a mystery out there, and all you have to do to remind yourself of that is to look up at the night sky. And it is no surprise that photographers want to capture the beauty and mystique of the night sky. In fact one of my most favorite types of photography is astro photography.
This is a composite of the 2016 Perseid meteor shower above Mount Adams in central Washington. First I took a lot of 30″ exposures one after another for 4 hours. After that I found all the images that had a meteor in it and combined all those together in Photoshop into one image.
What Is Astro-Photography
Astrophotography is just a fancy name for taking pictures of the night sky. But you can create some absolutely spectacular images of the night sky. We Earthlings are fortunate have a first class window to the entire universe right above our heads. But it is hard to see everything out there like nebula’s, comets, and planets, because they are so faint and far away that it is really hard to see them with the naked eye. But a camera opens up a whole new world of possibilities to see and capture all the amazing things that is happening just beyond our little planet.
This guide will teach you how to get a great picture of the night sky, when is the best time of the year to do it, where you should go to find some dark skies, and what camera gear will give you the best possible results. Astro-photography has a bit of a learning curve but once you know the basics, you will be pumped to head out in search of dark skies.
A full moon lit up the night sky so much that only the brightest stars in the sky would show up in this image. Everything else was too dim to see through the glowing blue glow. It was a cold night in the high desert in Central Oregon earlier this year. The next morning we woke up with frost all over the tent.
Where To Go
The name of the game with taking pictures of the night sky is to be someplace dark. The closer you are to a populated area, the more light pollution their is and the harder it is to see the stars. Light pollution is the glow you see in the night sky above a city. That glow makes it nearly impossible to see those faint stars or the milky way. When you get further away from those populated areas, you star to see all the little details and the billions of little dots of light twinkling in the night sky.
You can use a website like Dark Site Finder to see where to go to get away from all the light pollution.
This is a light pollution map. The dark areas of the map show where there is no light pollution. You can see the cosmos in all its glory in these places. The Green ares are where there is some light pollution, but you can still see many of the stars in the night sky but the faintest ones are no longer visible. The Yellow and Red areas are the most populated areas where only the brightest objects in the sky are visible. Astro-photography is not very practical in these areas but not impossible. :)
Anywhere that would make for a good landscape location during the day also looks great at night.
Camping trips and overnight backpacking trips offer some of the best opportunities for getting those killer shots of the night sky at some amazing dark locations. When I go camping, I like to find someplace that has a nice view of a mountain, maybe a lake, or a river. Anywhere that would make for a good landscape during the day also looks great at night.
When To Go Take Pictures of the Stars
These are some of the factors you should consider when deciding when to out and take pictures of the night sky. No one time of the year is better than another time of the year, It is just different.
Check the weather to see when it is going to be nice and clear. Good luck getting any pictures of the stars if its cloudy or rainy.
Air Quality – The air is usually much cleaner in the colder winter months than during the summer. A smoggy haze can form in the summer months and linger until the rain comes and washes everything out of the air. But if you cant handle the cold, any other clear night of the year will work just fine.
The Moon can drastically influence how well you can see the night sky. The best time to go out to capture the night sky is when the moon is just a small crescent, or when there is no moon at all. The partial moon will help illuminate the foreground so you will be able to see detail in the land and the sky. If the moon is too large, the sky will be washed out and the foreground will be really bright. Not the best for astro-photography.
The sky changes from winter to summer. What is visible during the winter is no longer visible during the summer and vice versa. The Summer months between June and early September is when the Milky Way is most visible in the Northern hemisphere. The Winter months often have much clearer skies from all the rain washing all the debris out of the air. but it is also incredibly cold on those clear nights.
The sky is different in the summer than it is in the winter. In the Northern Hemisphere during the summer, you can usually see the glow of the milky way in the night sky. But the Milky Way is not nearly as visible in the winter. The same goes for constellations. Orion is only visible during the winter months. This is because the earth is really makes one complete revolution in 23 Hours and 56 minutes. That means that as the year goes on, the night sky is getting 4 minutes extra every day and by the time half a year passes by, you are looking at the sky that is usually only visible during the day, but now you can see it because it is now visible during the night. This is a crazy concept to think about, Click HERE to read more about this on Space.com
Night Sky Objects To Take Pictures of
There are all sorts of different objects in the night sky to take pictures of. Chances are you wont get to see all these in the same night, and if you did, that would be an absolutely spectacular evening. Smartphone apps like Starwalk and Stellarium will help you locate all these objects. Check out the recommended apps below to see more.
The Milky Way – The milky way is the crown jewel of night time astro photography. The huge band consisting of billions of galaxies with an incomprehensible number of planets stretches clear across the sky glowing a beautiful array of greens, and purples, blues, and reds. The milky way can make for an absolutely spectacular subject in your photo.
The Moon – The moon has been used since the beginning of mankind to keep track of time and the seasons. It is also often the most visible object in the night sky and the easiest subject to shoot when you are just dipping your toe into Astro-photography. The moon is also a great object to use to help you focus your lens at night.
Planets – There are a hand full of planets that are visible from earth with the naked eye. Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn particularly. With a long enough telephoto lens or a telescope you will be able to take pictures of these planets and see details on the surface. In the picture I took of Jupiter, you can see the red bands on the surface and also the 4 moons orbiting the planet.
Star Trails – Another option is to take a series of images with the exact same composition over an hour or two and stack those images all together in Photoshop to make a picture like the one above.The Sun – Without the Sun, there most likely would not be any life on earth, so why not show your gratitude for life by taking a picture of our local star. You may think its crazy or impossible to take a picture of the sun but it is totally possible. Get yourself a solar filter for your camera or a solar film that is so dark that you can look directly at the sun through it and not burn your retina. You will be able to see sunspots on the surface of the sun as well as any planets that pass in between the Sun and Earth.
Eclipses – A solar or Lunar eclipse is also a great time to whip out your camera and take some pictures of the show. During a solar eclipse part of the sun is blocked by the moon. During a Lunar eclipse, the moon passes into the shadow of the Earth causing the moon to turn a blood red color. This are called a Blood Moon. A Lunar eclipse requires no more special gear than a camera and a lens and maybe a tripod, but a solar eclipse can damage your vision and your camera so make sure to use a solar filter to cut the light.
The Northern Lights/Aurora Borealis – If you are near a Northern latitude up in Alaska, Iceland, or Canada, there is a good chance you might get to see the Northern lights. Solar storms on the surface of the sun emit solar winds that disrupt the Earths magnetosphere and emits light. People go on trips to Iceland every winter for the sole purpase of seeing the northern lights. The aurora can dip down into the lower latitudes if there is a particularly strong solar storm impacting earth. The Aurora is one of those things you absolutely must see and photograph at least once in your life.
The Northern lights were visible in Northwest Oregon in August 2016 when a solar storm was causing strong solar winds to impact Earth.
International Space Station/Satellites – The ISS orbits the earth every 90 minutes so it is constantly passing overhead. The space station will be a very light object moving clear across the sky at a good speed.
Comets – Every once in a while a comet comes zooming by the earth. As the comet approaches the earth you will start to be able to see the glow of the tail of the comet or a dust cloud around it. In 2013 Comet Ison was passing by the earth and I was able to capture an image of teh comet showing the soft green glow surrounding the object.
Meteors – Every year several meteor showers bombard the earth in a spectacular display of lights and flashes. The Perseid meteor shower around the 12th of August every year is my favorite. Meteors
UFO’s – The best thing about the night sky is that it is always changing and you never know who or what will be flying overhead.
Required Gear
You don’t need any fancy here to get a decent Night sky photo. Even a kit lens on a five-year-old camera is totally capable of making some cool night sky photos. That being said, good gear definitely helps you make better pictures of the night sky.
Camera
You want any camera that allows you to shoot in full Manual mode. One where you can control the Aperture, the shutter speed, and the ISO all independently. You will need to control all of those separate to get the best results. The larger sensor inside a full frame camera like the canon 5D mark IV, Nikon D810, or the Sony A7R II works better for picking up low light and reducing noise in the shodows, but a crop sensor camera will work just fine. I have shot a lot of really cool astro photos with the 7D and 7D II which are both crop sensor cameras.
But the current best camera for astro photography is the Sony A7R II. The sensor inside the camera is an absolute beast at picking up low light and has quickly become the go-t0 camera for astro photographers. You can also mount any canon lenses you have to the Sony A7R II using the Metabones adapter.
A Solid Tripod
When you’re taking pictures of the night sky, you are usually taking and exposure lasting many seconds if not minutes long. Any vibrations that the camera feels will show up in your Final image. This is why you want a strong stable tripod. You can leave everything else at home besides your camera, Your lens, and your tripod and you would still be able to take some great night photos. The tripod is incredibly important for astro-photography so invest in a good solid strong and preferably lightweight tripod. REC GEAR
Lens
The best lens for photographing the night sky is one that is fast and wide. But the faster your lenses go, the more expensive they get.
A fast lens with an Aperture around f/1.4, 1.8, 2.8 to pick up as much light as possible in a short amount of time. If you do not have a fast lens with a low f-stop, just try with whatever lens you have and see what you can get.
A wide lens with a nice wide focal length anywhere from 11mm-24mm works best. If you go any higher than that and you are going to only see a small corner of the sky. The longer your focal length, the shorter your exposure can be before the stars start to move in your picture causing your stars to look like lines instead of little circles. The “Rule of 500” is used to figure out the exact length your exposure can be before you , but that will be explained later.
Suggested Astrophotography Lenses
Here are three lenses that I recommend for astro photography. All these lenses are under $650 and provide excellent results.
Rokinon 24mm f/1.4– This lens is fantastic because it is really fast to capture the faint stars quickly, its relatively wide at 24mm, and fairly inexpensive when compared to canon’s expensive 24mm 1.4. This lens works best on a full frame camera because 24mm on a crop sensor camera equates to 38mm. And a 38mm lens is not wide enough to capture much of the night sky. There has been some quality control issues with this lens so make sure everything works properly when you get it. I had to send my first one back because it would change focus t a completely different place when I took a picture that was different than what I focused on. If you get a good copy, this lens is hard to beat. A fast lens like the Rokinon 24mm f1.4 is a fantastic and affordable lens for astro-photography.
Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 – This lens is not quite as fast as the lens above, but it is much wider field of view at 14mm and still pretty fast at 2.8. This lens will work much better with a crop sensor than the 24mm above because when you use a full frame lens on a crop sensor body, you have to account for the crop factor. When this lens is used on a canon crop sensor camera its real focal length is around 22mm. 14*1.6=22.4mm.
Remote Shutter Release/Intervalometer – A remote shutter release allows you to trigger the shutter on your camera without touching it. If your camera has WiFi, you could also use your smart phone as a remote but I would rather not stare at a bright phone screen when trying to see in the dark. Many of the remotes that are sold for cameras also double as an intervalometer. An Intervalometer is a device that releases the shutter on your camera at a set interval. crucial in taking hundreds of pictures one after the other. I used an intervalometer to create this time lapse video of the Perseid Meteor Shower. Without one I would have not be able to take the hundreds of pictures at the exact right moment over 4 hours to create this video.
Flashlight/Headlamp with RED mode. – It gets dark out there when you are taking pictures of the stars. Make sure you bring a flashlight or a headlamp when you are taking pictures after dark. You don’t want to trip over anything or walk off a cliff. A headlamp with a RED light mode is preferred so you don’t ruin your night vision. The red light has less effect than a bright white light. Just remember to be considerate when using your flashlight. make sure nobody is in the middle of an exposure before you shine your light into the scene or go walking through their shot.
Advanced Gear
As you get more comfortable taking pictures of the night sky, you will start to bump up against the limitations of your equipment. So far the gear list has been the basics of what you need for astro-photography, the following are some gear items that will help you create even more spectacular images of the stars.
Star Tracker – A star tracker is a device that points your camera at a specific star, but as that object moves through the sky, the tracker automatically follows that object. This enables you to take pictures of the night sky lasting several minutes to hours or longer. When you are taking a picture this long, you will be able to see nebula’s, and neighboring galaxies.
Telescope – Telescopes are not just for looking through, you can also mount a camera to a telescope to take ultra magnified images of our galaxy. You will need to order some special equipment to get your camera to mount onto the telescope. Here you can read about how I got my camera mounted onto a home built telescope from the 1950’s that I was gifted. LINK
This image was shot through a home built telescope that I was gifted. I mounted my DSLR onto the telescope and captured this image of Jupiter and his 4 moons. Not bad for a telescope that was built in the 1950’s.
Getting The Stars in Focus
One of the more tricky parts of taking pictures of the night sky is getting everything in focus. When you look through the view finder, the stars are so small that it can be difficult to tell if the star is tack sharp or not. These tips will help get those stars nice and sharp.
Turn on Liveview to see what the camera is seeing. Find the brightest object in the sky and try to focus on that. Zoom in on the preview 5x or 10x to see up close if you are in focus. The moon or a bright star or planet works best for this.
If I cant find a planet or bright object to focus on, try to use a streetlight or porch light on a house off in the distance to focus on. Point your camera at that object and use the live view plus the 5x or 10x preview to attain focus.
If you can not focus on a light source, set your lens to the infinity mark and take a picture, review the image on the back screen to verify if the lens is focused correctly. Repeat until you are focused on something nice and sharp.
Set your focus while there is still some daylight in the sky. Stick a piece of tape onto the lens to keep the focus ring from spinning. Now your camera is ready for when its dark and you can just start shooting without worrying about bumping the focus ring.
Camera Settings
These are my go to camera settings for astro-photography. Start with these settings and change them as needed.
25-30 Second long exposure – 25 seconds is the point where I can get the most light into the camera without the stars starting to move. If I bump it up to 30 seconds, the stars start to look like little ovals instead of little points of light so I usually keep it at 25 seconds.
High ISO (1600-3200) – To pick up as much light as possible without too much noise. As I increase the ISO above 3200 it starts to get some bad noise issues. When there is too much noise, it is especially hard to see little stars in a noisy sky. This is why people who are really into astro-photography to invest in a camera that can produce really clean noiseless images when shooting at high ISO’s. See the Gear section above to see what cameras are great for astro-photography.
f1.4, f2.8, f3.5, or as low of an f-stop as possible to pick up as much light as possible. But if you have a lens that only goes down to f4, that lens will work just fine. It wont be as good as the fast f1.4 lenses but they you can still get a decent shot of the stars
Rule of 500/600 – The stars in the sky are constantly on the move. It is hard to see it with the naked eye, but when you are looking through a camera lens at the stars or moon, you can easily notice the movement of the stars through the sky. The stars will look like little white lines instead of crisp points of light. The Photo Pills app talked about below has a built in calculator to help you figure out the Rule of 500 for any lens you have.
The 500 Rule is a little formula that you can use to see how long of an exposure you can take depending on the focal length of your lens and not get those little star streaks. This rule was originally called the 600 Rule but that number wash changed to 500 because people still noticed a little movement in the stars when 600 was used.
For example: If you are shooting with a 24mm lens on a Full frame camera. You would take 500/25=20.8 seconds. You can take a 21 second long exposure before you will capture the movement of the stars.
If you are using a crop sensor camera, like the canon 7D II for example and a 24mm lens, you will have to multiply the focal length by 1.6 to get the true focal length. 500/(1.6*24)=13 seconds.
If you are using a 10mm wide angle lens on a crop sensor camera, you can leave the exposure going for much longer than with a less wide lens. 500/10
Post Processing
The internet is full of amazing pictures of the Milky Way, or showing a bunch of shooting stars fall to earth. These images do NOT come out of the camera this way. Astro photos require quite a bit of post processing to take them from ordinary to out of this world.
I have a basic workflow that I use for 99% of my astro photos. These settings work for most of the pictures but sometimes they take some extra tweaking to get the very best image.
Open your image in Adobe Lightroom
Go to the Develop Module
Adjust the exposure just a little bit – I do this to bring out any detail that might remain in the shadows. Just be careful not to overexpose the image. Adjust it untill you can see the most detail but you are not losing detail in the brighter areas of the image.
Decrease the Blacks – You want the stars to stand out from a dark background
Increase the Highlights and Whites – This makes the brightest parts of the image a little bit brighter. The stars will stand out better against the darkness of space.
Add some contrast to make the milky way start to pop. The dark parts get a little darker, and the light areas get brighter.
Adjust the Tone Curve – I will boost up the Highlights and Lights, raise or lower the Darks (raise in this case) and lower the Shadows.
Add some clarity to make the stars pop a little more. Just don’t overdo it because it will start to add grain to the image.
Adjust the White Balance to make the image more blue. It looks really unnatural when the night sky is glowing a dull yellow color.
Adjust the Saturation a tiny bit to bring out some of the purples and greens in the milky way but Be careful not to overdo the saturation and make it look fake.
Reduce the noise using the noise slider. Don’t go too far because you will start to lose detail in the stars if you add too much noise reduction.
Adjust Dehaze slider – This slider removes that hazy glow that is in the air to better see the stars and Milky way better.
Crop the image as desired
Export and Share! – You went to all the effort to take the picture, now its time to show it off.
Helpful Apps
There are many apps that can help you plan your shoot. Some apps will tell you where the moon/sun will rise and set, where any constellation is going to be in the sky at any particular time, when two planets are going to conjunct, all sorts of things. No one app will tell you everything so these are the collection of apps I use to assist in my astro photography.
The Photographers Ephemeris (TPE) – TPE is one of the most important apps I use all the time to help plan my photo shoots. I am constantly using it to tell me when and where the moon is going to rise from anyplace on earth. If you want to capture a full moon rising behind a mountain, or when the sun is going to set between two rocks, than look no further than TPE. The best thing about The Photographers Ephemeris is that its free to use on a desktop computer. A mobile version can be purchase in the iPhone and Google App Store that is totally worth the price if you ask me, and that is my true opinion. LINK
This map shows where the Sun and Moon are going to rise and set. The light yellow line is the direction from which the Sun will rise and the Orange line is where the Sun is going to set. The light blue is where the Moon is going to rise, and the dark Blue is where the moon will set.
Photo Pills – Photo Pills is another required app for the landscape and astro photographer. The app is full of useful tools for photographers like Sun and Moon tracking, Exposure calculators, Depth of Field calculators, Hyper-focal distance calculators, Night augmented reality to see where the stars are going to be, Star trail calculators, etc. If I were to buy just one App to assist in my photography, it would be Photo Pills. Apple App Store LINK
Star Walk – Star Walk is a nifty little app that I use often. It is an app that shows you all the different constellations, where many of the satellites are, when the International Space Station is going to pass overhead. What planet you are looking at, etc. There are 2 versions of Star Walk, but I prefer the first version because It has an augmented view mode that shows you what you are pointing your iPhone at. As you spin around, so does the app so it shows you what you are looking at while facing the other direction. Apple App Store Link
Star Walk for the iPhone
Stellarium – Stellarium works in much the same way as Star Walk. It shows you Deep-Sky objects, where the Sun and Moon is going to rise, where the satellites are, where the planets are, Constelations, Equatorial grid lines, Azimuthal grid lines, and a bunch of other neat things. Stellarium even has a built-in RED mode to help protect your night vision. That is the first app where I have seen that. Apple App Store Link
Final Tips
Take landscape photos at night when the moon is about half full or a little less. The moon will illuminate the ground so you will be able to see the landscape around you. If the moon is not lit up at all, everything will just be completely black. If the moon is fully illuminated than everything will be way too bright. You want to find the happy middle ground.
Use a headlamp with a RED mode to help preserve your night vision. Just remember to be considerate with where you shine your lights One wrong movement can ruin somebody else picture and they wont be happy.
Dress warm, it gets cold out there at night so bring gloves, warm pants, an extra jacket, or even a warm blanket. A beverage of some sort often helps too.
*This article is dedicated to my lovely and patient wife who tolerates my hogging of the window seat to take pictures out of it. This is one of the side effects of being married to a photographer.
Are you a window seat person? Or are you a isle seat person? I am a window person, always was, always will be. If you are an Isle person, then this article is not for you. Since the first time I flew in an airplane, I have always been glued to that airplane window looking out trying to see everything down below. Getting a different perspective of the world has always been exciting to me. Now that I have grown up, nothing has changed. I am still trying to get that window seat. Only now I have my camera with me and I am trying to take pictures out the window.
Downtown Portland, Oregon as seen from my window seat just after takeoff.
Camera Settings
These settings are assuming you are traveling during daylight hours. It can be incredibly bright outside when you are flying high up above the clouds. The sun reflects off of clouds nearly blinding you. As the sun sets and it gets dark, these settings will have to change to be able to take pictures in low light conditions.
I would either suggest shooting in Shutter Priority, or Manual mode. Whichever you are more comfortable with. I shoot in manual mode because I like to get my settings right, then not have to worry about it changing on me. Just check your images every so often to make sure you are still getting a good exposure.
Aperture:F8-F16 When you are taking these pictures out of an airplane, you can see for miles and miles. You want most of that vast landscape to be in focus. A higher aperture of around F8-F18 or higher will create a large Depth of Field and have more of the view in focus.
Shutter Speed: 1/250th a second or faster. Airplanes are moving pretty fast and they are constantly shaking around. A faster shutter speed will help freeze any motion and prevent camera shake resulting in a sharper image.
ISO: 100-200 if it is bright outside, 800-3200 if it is dark outside. Remember that the higher the ISO is set, the more noise will be introduced into the image.
Recommended Lenses
A good medium telephoto lens like the 24-70mm or the 24-105mm will get you close to those objects out the window, but still allow you to see the surrounding landscape.
I do not recommend a wide angle lens because it will make far away objects look really small, and you will get parts of the airplane in the shot as well.
Auto Focus vs Manual Focus
The Auto Focus seems to always want to focus on the window instead of what is outside the window. I like to use my DSLR because I can manually focus on the land below and not that dirty window. It can be extremely frustrating when the camera will not focus on what you intend it to focus on.
Choosing Your Seat
Not every seat is made equal. Some seats have little legroom when others have a lot. Some Seats might not incline while others do. And some seats might not even have a window! I use a website SeatGuru.com when picking my seat and it will tell you what seats are the best, and what seats to avoid. Some airlines such as Southwest Airlines does not allow you to choose your seat before hand. If I have a choice, I will not fly airlines that are first come first serve for seats because I like to know that I have a reserved window seat.
If possible I will try to sit towards the front of the plane in front of the wings. Your view will be obscured from this part of the plane. The engines also sometimes produce contrails and thermal distortions from the heat. Smaller aircraft may reserve this part of the plane for business and first class passengers. But larger airplanes often have coach seats in front of the wings.
When booking your tickets, make sure you know what to expect on your flight. Because if you are like me, you would be totally bummed out if I did not have a window to look out of. I could put up with a non-reclining seat, or a seat near the bathroom. But not having a window is where I draw the line.
What Side Of The Plane Should You Sit On?
Look over your flight path, are there any large monuments or geological formations like mountains or lakes along the route that you want to see from the air? On my most recent flight to San Francisco, I knew that I wanted to see the cascade mountains (Mt. Hood, Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Bachelor, The Three Sisters, etc so i knew I wanted to see East out my window. So I had to sit on the left side of the aircraft, also known as Port side. The Right side of the aircraft is known as the Starboard side. These terms originated from nautical terms aboard ships. Sailors used these terms to avoid confusion because the terms “left” and “right” are relative to a persons orientation.
The Sunny Side vs. The Shady Side
Do you want to sit on the sunny side or the shady side of the plane? I usually try to opt for the shadow side of the airplane so the window is not lit up from the sunlight showing all the dirt and grease on the window.
The Window
The window is often fairly dirty. A combination of dirt and grime from traveling all over the world, plus the sticky hands of passengers touching the window can make them difficult to take pictures through. Sometimes I will wipe down the window with a napkin if it means having a better image quality.
When the sun is shining through a window, it can make it much harder to get a clean image though. The sun now illuminates all the dirt and grime, and those little grease marks that seem to cover the window.
The edges of the windows also distort the image. Try to have your camera look through the center of the window where there is the least amount of distortion.
Get your camera right up close to the window, but do not touch the window. The aircraft is vibrating and if you touch the lens to the glass, the camera will shake just like the airplane is.
Getting the lens close to the window will mean you are less likely to get the edges of the window in your image. You will also have less chance for there to be a glare reflecting on the inside of the window and appearing in your image. You can also take a dark t-shirt of sweatshirt and hold it over the camera to guarantee there wont be any glare from behind the camera.
Direct sunlight on the window will show every bit of dirt, every scratch, and a hazy color ruining your visibility out the window.
When the airplane is up near cruising altitude somewhere around 30,000 feet. The outside air temperature is below freezing, and the airplane window can start to ice up further obscuring your view. There is not a lot you can do about this but to just be aware.
The best part of the plane to sit in if you intend to take pictures out the window is in front of the wings. If you sit behind the wings, they jet out into your frame and every picture you take will be an advertisement for the airline you are flying. Most commercial jets have Winglets at the tips of their wings that point up and down at the tips of the wings to help reduce drag. But the Winglets also are convenient locations for the airlines to advertise their brands. But the last time I flew, I flew Virgin America, and their Winglets had the American flag on them which is much better than words.
Other Tips
Remember to be considerate to the people around you. It can be extremely annoying If you are using a camera that makes noise when the shutter is released. They will not be happy if you are taking pictures an entire flight
Share the window. If you are flying with somebody else, consider trading off seats to share the view.
You are now ready to take the absolute best pictures out of that airplane window. Now its time to book your tickets for an adventure to someplace new and exciting. Just remember to keep that camera handy during the flight. You never know what you are going to see from your window seat. Now enjoy your flight! ✈️
What Time is Sunset at?
The Sun – Without the Sun, there most likely would not be any life on earth, so why not show your gratitude for life by taking a picture of our local star. You may think its crazy or impossible to take a picture of the sun but it is totally possible. Get yourself a solar filter for your camera or a solar film that is so dark that you can look directly at the sun through it and not burn your retina. You will be able to see sunspots on the surface of the sun as well as any planets that pass in between the Sun and Earth.
What Side Of The Plane Should You Sit On?
