A friend of mine is a commercial pilot of small aircraft and has recently expanded his business to include aerobatic flights as well as the standard scenic and charter flights.
I was lucky enough to go for a flight with him last week, and of course I had to take my camera along.

It was my first aerobatic flight, and to be honest I wasn't sure what to expect. I was prepared to watch the world spinning around in front of me, but I wasn't prepared for just how physical the forces would be on my body. It turns out that 5Gs really feels like a LOT, kind of like having 5 tons of concrete poured on top of you. But it was pulling negative G's that really put the wind up me; having gravity reversed just doesn't feel natural. With so many conflicting sensations being fed into my brain, it really struggled to make sense of things. But that was half the fun. And it was a lot of fun.
Overall it was much, much more exciting than I was expecting it to be, and I was buzzing with excitement for the whole night afterwards. The visual aspect of seeing things upside down from high in the air was only the sideshow. The main event was definately the physical sensation of it all. It was indescribable. I can't wait to go again!

But this is a photography forum, so I'll talk photography. Because we were doing aerobatics, I was pretty limited in what gear I could take. Everything has to be secured to something, and there was almost no spare room in the front. I had a camera (5DMk2) and a lens (17-40L) and that was about it. I did have a couple of other lenses in a bag strapped in the back seat, but it was such a pain to swap that I didn't bother (and didn't really need to for the shots I wanted). I also took a GoPro Hero HD video camera with me to grab some video. We tried a couple of different mounting points for the GoPro, and both ended up work very well. There is another mounting point out on the wing-tip which is perfectly suited for mounting another GoPro (facing back towards the aircraft), but I think Rolf needs to get an engineer's report before he's allowed to mount anything externally... so we didn't try that out on this flight.

And the results?

Click HERE to watch the edited video of the flight (HD version available).

And here are some of the still shots..


1. Looking forward from my seat, we're heading down the coast south of Perth to Rockingham where there is some uncontrolled airspace we can play in. You can see a bit of blur from the prop.


2. These grins can only mean one thing: TROUBLE.


3. Rolf is just warming up with some steep turns. Note the GoPro mounted on the A-pillar in front of Rolf.


4. Doing a barrel-roll over Rockingham.


5. My favourite shot, mid-way through a loop.


6. Perfect winter weather.

Shooting was difficult but fun. At 5Gs it was hard just to hold the camera up in front of me. If I had my 1D with a 70-200L mounted on it with me, I don't think I could have lifted it. So in the video you often see me resting the camera and hands on the dash. That was absolutely necessary for support at high Gs.
I was focusing manually just by using the focus scale on the lens and guesstimating the distance from camera to subject. I was shooting at a widest aperture of f/4 on a wide-angle lens, so DOF wasn't all that shallow - my guesstimates worked fine - I think I only mucked up on a couple of shots.
I used a polarizing filter to cut some of the reflections from windows and sea, put some depth in the sky and put as much pop into all the colours as I could. This worked well, although it did cost me a couple of stops of light, forcing me to shoot at around 400iso to get the shutter speeds I wanted.
The biggest unknown was the lighting. As you can see from the video, during the rolls the lighting changes dramatically from one second to the next. We tried runs in both directions to have the sun on both sides of the aircraft, but ultimately it comes down to a bit of luck and getting lots of shots (and doing lots of rolls). I think shot #5 really nailed the light, and this is the kind of thing I was really hoping for. But there were plenty of dud shots too.

Well you certainly looked like you were enjoying it. 5G's is pretty uncomfortable. :/
Nice to see the video.

I love the video... I couldn't stop smiling back at the monitor....

I really like a lot the scene at 0.40 where the horizon is the background and rotates... That looks fantastic!

Your pictures are beautiful as well. I specially like #4 the light is great!

Beautiful work... Thanks, Adrian, for sharing your experience here...

WOW! Dear Adrian what a beautiful day for you yesterday, I wished to be there too But probably I couldn't have taken any picture... This is absolutely such a beautiful experience with your camera, and to watch you both, amazing! I loved it so much, and also your photographs too, But seems that you didn't take pictures of Perth ? Just I wondered

Thank you,
with my love,
nia

Great video, Kombi. I particularly like the way the light play in the view taken from the front of the plane. Super story and photographs - it looks like it was a blast.

Thanks.

Nia, we didn't do anything else on that flight except aerobatics. Rolf (the pilot) didn't put much fuel in the plane to keep weight at a minimum, so there are no scenic photos from around Perth from this flight.
But there will be other opportunities.

Brill! How you managed to take any shots at 5G...and avoided the Chunder Wonder...quite beyond me...you must have asbestos innards Ade.