Anybody with Aerial shooting experience

[Abiciriderback]

My wife's friend has a friend that is a helicopter pilot and she has set it up so that he will take me up to shot a Hot Air Balloon Rally. I have never shot in the air before. Any tips special equipment techniques would greatly be appreciated. I will be shooting with a canon 10d. Lenses vari from 50mm to 200-500mm.

Ray Still

[Loupey]

I've only shot out of a helicopter once in Kauai so take that into consideration here, but here are my thoughts:

Lots of curved windows - if possible, shoot from an opening. If not, think of it as shooting at an aquarium but reversed - you are on the inside shooting out - so watch those reflections! Shoot with the lens as close as possible to the glass, try not to shoot when the sun is at an angle that shows every blemish on the glass, etc.

Shoot fast and fairly wide open. Your 10D is good to ISO 200 (I've used one for years), so keep it there. Unless your pilot friend likes to make enemies, he's going to be pretty far away from the balloons so you're not going to need to think about DOF (consider everything from about 200' to infinity as "one plane" - even with moderate telephotos). Shutter speed will be your key to getting sharp images.

As with just about everything, I recommend shooting full manual (exposure and focus) to lock it where you need it. You're going to be getting a lot of sky in your shots (obviously) and you need to make sure that you overexpose over what your camera is telling you.

Good luck. Don't fall out.

[another view]

I've shot from a small plane before, and was really surprised at how wide of a focal length I ended up using compared to what I expected. A fairly wide aperture is a good idea to not only keep the windows (if you have to shoot thru them) out of view and keep the shutter speed up. I would guess the 200-500 would be a really tough lens to shoot in a situation like that.

[SmartWombat]

Don't forget that a helicopter is a relatively unfriendly platform to shoot from.
Plenty of vibration so resting the lens on anything is likely to make things worse, not better.
Oh that means you too, so don't lean your elbow on the arm rest - completely hand held.
That alone might rule out your 200-500mm range.

Intercom !
If you can talk to the pilot in flight, then you can get to the right lighting angle, isolate the balloons against the right background, generally the right composition rather than rely on randomly being in the right place at the right time.

High shutter speeds to combat the shake, IS on mode 1 if you've got it in a hover otherwise mode 2 if you're panning with a slower subject, and wide apertures so you can get close to the glass and not see the scratches too badly, lens hood (the flock covered ones with the Canon L series are great) to minimise reflections from the window.

I found that it's almost impossible to shoot straight down, but talk to your pilot. If we'd planned it beforehand I could have used a full harness instead of the lap belt, and shot out of the door - or rather the hole where door should have been. BUT the health and safety (boo!) regulations may make that impossible, let alone the FAA.
Note: If you do have a wide opening, then everything has to be secured. Don't change lenses, add/remove filters, or even swap memory cards. You won't believe how much trouble you can get into of you drop anything from an aircraft! Oh and if what you drop hits the tail rotor that can really ruin your day
I suggest you empty your pockets of the rubbish you normally carry and your outer layer has zipped pockets to prevent accidents. I even taped on the lens hoods so they couldn't come loose.

Orbiting the subject is a good idea, you can use mode 1 IS because you're not panning, but unlike fixed wing you can't use a steep angle because the rotor slap at speed is going to shake your image a lot. You'll need to be flying slow, and that's not always possible. So a direct vertical shot is probably out.

My pilot at Spa was having fun on the hairpin, actually flying the circuit put us at high bank angles with measurable G - it wasn't a low & slow pleasure flight The consequence was blurred images as I wasn't expecting so much hammering in the airframe. But it was great to compare to driving the track.
I digress ... back to the subject.
If you're in a tight high bank turn at low speed, crank up the shutter speed !

Avoid long telephoto if you have to shoot through the windows, they're not glass - usually plexiglass and that's normally not even close to optically flat.
The distortions will still be there with a wider lens, but they will be less noticeable.

At least most helicopters have high level engines so turbulence from the hot exhaust shouldn't be a problem.

Check the histogram, if it's all bunched up in the middle you've got haze that you haven't noticed. Tough luck, you can't change the weather. But you can fix it later to some extent.
Oh nearly forgot, you are shooting in RAW aren't you?
If not, get some practice with it now, you get so much extra latitude for correction than with JPEG.

If you're tempted to shoot with a polariser, I'd think again.
It's most effective at 90 degrees to he sun, but if you're flying around that will constantly change.
So will the angle that you need to set the polariser at, which means continually putting your hand in the front of the lens to rotate it - reaching past the lend hood slowing you down.
Depends how long you have in the air and your shooting angle.

Like sports, I reckon the ideal lens combination is a 24-70 f/2.8 L on a full frame body and a 70-200 f/2.8 L IS on a 1.3 crop body. You can use wide apertures and still get a sharp image, and depending on the oblique angle (the height difference between you and the subject) you have pretty much a flat field anyhow. That is at any decent flying speed, height and a safe separation, get closer, fly lower, fly faster and all this changes

[drg]

Take your Dramamine if vertigo or any other motion sickness plagues you.