How to Capture Pictures from Airplanes and Helicopters

Whether you are seated in an aisle seat of an airplane or circling the Grand Canyon, Niagara Waterfalls or the Statue of Liberty in sightseeing helicopter, keep your digital camera handy for clicking some great shots. PCW has some tips for shooting pictures from heights:

Don’t Focus - At the distances you’ll be shooting, there’s no need to focus your camera; everything will be at “infinity.” If your camera has a manual focus mode, use that mode and then set the focus on infinity.

If your camera doesn’t have a manual focus control, then it almost certainly has a Landscape exposure mode (often one of the scene settings). One of the things that Landscape does is set your camera to focus at infinity, so that’s a good substitute.

Shoot Fast - Shoot at the highest shutter speed possible to counteract the natural motion of the aircraft. If your camera has a shutter priority or action photography mode, you can use that. The more you zoom, the higher your shutter speed should be. To help your camera find a faster speed, try increasing the ISO a little. Link.