What's best for aerial photography?

[KC10Chief]

I was thinking about getting into a little aerial photography for fun and maybe even to make some extra money down the line. I have a powered paraglider and it would be extremely easy to take photos while flying. Anyways, I'm pretty much sold on the Canon Digital Rebel XT 350D. 8 megapixels is all the resolution I would ever need! I have used film SLR's in the past and currently take all of my photos with a Sony F717 digital camera. There are so many choices out there such as kits. I don't want to buy a camera and get a bunch of lenses that aren't that great. What would be a great lens to go with this camera for aerial photos? I don't need a kit with a bunch of junk like a tripod, bags, cleaning kits, etc. I have all that stuff. I just want the camera, a great lens, at LEAST a 2gb memory card and the card reader. If anybody has any recommendations, I would really appreciate it! Thanks! Matt

[Liz]

I'm not sure how much focal length you want, but check this page out - it's from B&H and has listed quite a few longer zooms - from the 70-200mm/f2.8IS to the 100-400, etc. They're expensive, but you can browse the rest of the options while you're on the link. I'm sure others will have more intelligent ideas.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...x=8&Submit.y=3

Liz

I was thinking about getting into a little aerial photography for fun and maybe even to make some extra money down the line. I have a powered paraglider and it would be extremely easy to take photos while flying. Anyways, I'm pretty much sold on the Canon Digital Rebel XT 350D. 8 megapixels is all the resolution I would ever need! I have used film SLR's in the past and currently take all of my photos with a Sony F717 digital camera. There are so many choices out there such as kits. I don't want to buy a camera and get a bunch of lenses that aren't that great. What would be a great lens to go with this camera for aerial photos? I don't need a kit with a bunch of junk like a tripod, bags, cleaning kits, etc. I have all that stuff. I just want the camera, a great lens, at LEAST a 2gb memory card and the card reader. If anybody has any recommendations, I would really appreciate it! Thanks! Matt

[drg]

Your lens choice probably wiil be determined by what you're trying to capture. Detail or panorama comes to mind as the two obvious aerial choices. I'd also believe that weight and how easily the lens handled might be important on a paraglider. Whether you want to manipulate a zoom or not while flying might dictate a fixed focal length.

There are some formulas for altitude vs field of view that you might want to consider. The Canon 85 1.8 EF lens might be a start for what I imagine is the usual operating altitude for an aircraft of this type.

Liz suggested some great lens options as well. There's a new Digital Lens in 17-85 with IS that might even be worth looking into and its less than $700 dollars the last time I had a price sheet.

Let us know and post photos please.

[EOSThree]

With your paraglider I would imagine you don't get too much altitude and therefore won't need a whole bunch of length. I just picked up a 28-135 IS lens to try my hand at aerial photography, I chose the IS lens because I hope the stabilization will help some with airplane vibrations and general bumpiness. I know in the IS has been helpful when experimenting with the new lens on the ground. Your ground speed won't be too fast and that will make shooting easier too. There is a poster on DPreview(Alaska43 I think)that does a fair amount of aerial photography from a small plane, you might want to look his work up and ask for some suggestions.
Another option I was thinking of was the new mega zoom point and shoot cameras such as the Panasonic FZ20, FZ5 and now the new FZ30, or the Canon S1 or S2. All of these point and shoots offer 12x or so zooms with IS(image stabilization) and I think would make wonderful sports/action/aerial/wildlife cameras.