Night photography - airplane traces

For an environmental project I have to take some B/W pictures to

illustrate how many planes are in the air here at night... guess why,

near Frankfurt, Germany, it is pretty loud at night... *yawn*...and

they will probably lift all restrictions to night activities as this

airport grows and grows...

 

I have already found a good place to overview this area and wait for a

night without clouds. As it is pretty cold here at this time I would

appreciate some help to avoid that I spent several nights in cold

darkness on a hill near Mainz, about 15 km from the airport.

 

What film, exposure etc. I have an extremely strong tripod, cable

release, a Canon EOS3 with some good zoom lenses, a Leica M6 with some

super-sharp lenses, but no idea how long at what aperture with what

film etc. I should start.

 

Any recommendations?

<p>I assume you want maximum contrast and possibly several planes on the same image...

then I would approach like fireworks photography: put the camera on the tripod, compose for

the area where the planes will appear, set to bulb and use the a cardboard or similar to "close

the lens" when there are no planes.

<p>--ben

Your main problem will be the background illumination. If there is none i.e. no or very few street or city lights then you can give a long exposure in the order of several minutes at f8 for film speed of ASA 200. This is a pure guess as the planes distances and the direction they are flying will affect their visability.

If they are heading towards the camera with their main wing lights on then you could stop down further than if they are flying side on. As they say it all depends.

 

Obviously if you had a digital camera you could do a few trial shots and get an instant result, but as it is you may have to spend a couple of nights with at least two rolls of films before you get the shots you require.

I've accidentally picked up some airplane traces when doing fireworks photography.<p><center>

<img WIDTH=600 HEIGHT=239 src="http://webs.lanset.com/rcochran/prettypics/fw15.jpg" border=10><p>

<img WIDTH=600 HEIGHT=251 src="http://webs.lanset.com/rcochran/prettypics/fw16.jpg" border=10><p></center>

<p>

Those were taken at f/8 on ISO 160 film, but the timing was not measured precisely, as I just held the shutter open until enough fireworks exploded to capture a pretty picture. I'm guessing 30 seconds or so of exposure. You can see two planes following each other in the approach pattern. They're the two bright white lines above the city about 1/3 of the way from the right edge of the photos. You can also see a much dimmer plane above in the second photo.

<p>

Note that the bright planes in the approach pattern had their landing lights on, and were captured from a perspective where their relative movement across the frame was slow. The dim plane was captured from an angle where only its side running lights were visible, and it was moving rapidly across the frame. These sorts of things will influence what aperture will work best.

Do a search on here for "star trails", which is basically what you're doing- only with artificial stars.

I think Benoit's answer is absolutely the best -- it's actually the opposite of what some night photographers do when photographing a scene where cars may drive through. They will use a cardboard or a hat or whatever to block the lens as the car passes through so the trails of the headlights don't show up in the photo. In your case, I think you would do well to set the camera on bulb and trip the shutter...then keep something over the lens and take it off only as planes pass overhead. This will avoid picking up too much "light pollution" from the city and nearby lights.

Well, covering the lens when there is no plane in the air is a somewhat limited solution: if you look at our sky here at night you will see 5-10 planes in the air all the time.

 

However, I will use some of these hints to start experimenting. Thanks to all of you, this was good help.