How to Photograph Queenstown from a Helicopter

Most people come back from a scenic flight with two hundred photographs and about four they would show anyone. The problem is almost never the camera. It is a curved window, a vibrating airframe and twenty five minutes that go faster than you expect.

Here is what actually helps.

Before you get in

Ask about the seat

On a small helicopter every seat is a window seat, but they are not equal. The front left or right, beside the pilot, gives you the widest forward view and the least airframe in the way. If there are two of you and one is the photographer, say so when you check in. It costs nothing to ask and it is often possible.

Wear dark clothing

This is the single cheapest improvement you can make. Light coloured jackets reflect off the inside of the window and put a ghost of yourself across every frame. Dark clothing almost disappears.

Clean your lens, and do not bring a polariser

A circular polariser sounds like the right tool for cutting glare and it is the wrong one here. Aircraft windows are curved acrylic under stress, and a polariser turns that stress into rainbow blotches across the sky. Leave it in the bag.

In the air

Fast shutter, always

A helicopter vibrates constantly. That vibration is what softens most flight photographs, and it is invisible on the back of the camera. Shoot at one thousandth of a second or faster and the problem largely disappears. On a bright alpine day that costs you nothing. Push the sensitivity up if you have to; a slightly grainy sharp photograph beats a clean blurred one every time.

Do not touch the window

Not with the lens, not with your hands, not with your forehead. Every point of contact transfers the airframe vibration straight into the camera. Hold the camera in the air, close to the glass but not on it, and let your arms absorb the movement.

Shoot down, not out

The instinct is to photograph the horizon. The horizon from a helicopter looks much like the horizon from a lookout. What you cannot get anywhere else is the view straight down: the braid of a river, the crevasse pattern on a snowfield, the shadow of the aircraft crossing a ridge, the shape of a lake you have only ever seen edge on.

Snow will fool your camera

Cameras assume the world is mid grey, so a frame full of snow comes back underexposed and slightly blue. Dial in one stop of positive exposure compensation before your first snow shot and check the result. On a phone, tap the snow and drag the exposure slider up.

If you are using a phone

Lock the exposure and focus by holding your finger on the subject, otherwise the phone will refocus every time the aircraft moves. Turn off any automatic high dynamic range setting if the light is very contrasty, because it merges several frames and the aircraft will have moved between them. And clean the lens, which on a phone has been in a pocket all morning.

On the ground, at the landing

You will have five or ten minutes and it will feel like two. Decide before you step out whether you want the aircraft in the picture or not, because the two shots want different positions and there is no time to try both properly.

For scale, put a person in the frame. A snowfield with nothing human in it reads as flat and small. One figure in a red jacket at forty metres tells the eye how big everything is.

Keep the sun behind you for the wide shots and in front of you for the dramatic ones, and remember that fresh snow reflects enough light to blow out a face completely if you expose for the landscape.

One safety note that overrides all of the above: stay where the pilot puts you, keep low near the aircraft, and never walk behind it. No photograph is worth improvising around a running helicopter.

The one setting most people miss

Continuous autofocus. The distance between you and the mountain is changing constantly, and single shot focus will lock onto the window frame, a smear on the glass, or nothing at all. Switch to the continuous mode and let it track.

For which flights give you the longest time in the air, which include a landing and what each one costs, see our guide to helicopter flights from Queenstown.

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General photography advice for scenic flights in the Queenstown region. Follow the safety briefing you are given on the day, which always takes precedence over anything written here.