When it comes to upgrading your camera gear, you can spend from zero dollars to an amount equivalent to your next three vacations plus one mortgage payment. It all depends on your goal.
With all the improvements in cellphone cameras, you can get professional quality in stills and video, but with limitations. You won’t get good telephoto shots of performers flying at airshows. An airplane in the sky will look like a black dot because the camera exposes for the sky. Handheld shots in an aviation museum may be blurry because the shutter will be open a long time.
Cellphones are for less-demanding scenes, but they have advantages, too. With automatic lens stabilization found on phones such as the iPhone 6s, even video shot handheld in a bouncing airplane can be usable. Photos from cellphones can quickly be transmitted to others, but cellphone images need tweaking. An app such as Camera+ or ProCamera for iPhones may turn your cellphone into a better camera. For simple photo editing, try Snapseed or Perfectly Clear.
Accessories for cellphones include tripods, grips, selfie sticks, and even an iStabilizer hand grip ($350 at istabilizer.com) that electronically stabilizes your cellphone. A remote trigger is also handy to prevent blur, as are a Gitzo monopod or a BallPod. Remote camera triggers for cellphones are available from HISY, iStabilizer, Maxstone, and others. MeFOTO makes tripods as well as a clamp to attach your cellphone to a tripod.
The Next Level up
Your airplane is just out of refurbishment and is ready for its close-up. Chances are, you ignore the cellphone and begin looking for that point-and-shoot. Point-and-shoots offer quality at prices that are not crazy expensive—but we’re still talking $1,000 for many. These not only must shoot airshows, dark aviation museums, and pictures of friends outside and inside the airplane, but everything that happens when you reach your destination.
As a highly demanding customer, you’ll want telephoto capability so the airplanes won’t look like insects. Wi-Fi would be nice so you can transfer the shots to a phone or tablet for processing. It needs to go wide for photographing in aircraft interiors or museums. You need a bigger sensor that can gather details in shadows, and a high burst rate at full resolution that can capture the moment two U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds jets cross during their knife-edge pass. Image stabilization is critical, given that the main use is aviation.
Show me the money
Top-of-the-line digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLRs) are those in our AOPA photographers’ bags, but many mid-range DSLRs are more than adequate to give big-sensor quality. Some have the APS-C (Advanced Photo System, type C) sensor that is almost an inch long and a little more than half an inch high. It’s known as a “crop” sensor, meaning that wide-angle lenses become less wide (that’s a bad thing), and telephoto lenses become more telephoto (a good thing). Others, the expensive ones, have full-frame sensors that are nearly 1.5 inches long and nearly an inch high.
Battery grips can keep you shooting longer, but add to the weight and bulk of the camera. Tripods are necessary for low-light photography, and need to be light and foldable for transport in your airplane. Two of the best brands are Gitzo and Manfrotto.
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