Camera settings when doing aerial photography is the big question that everyone wants to know. It boils down to making sure you have the right aperture to get full image sharpness to the edges of your frame and to then have the right shutter speed so you don’t end up having blur or softness due to a slower shutter speed.

The above shot of Bondi Beach is perfect and sharp but the problem with the images is the loss of image sharpness it has on the edges of the photo resulting from the aperture being f4. For your aerial images to have the best edge sharpness you are going to want to shoot at an aperture no less that f8, especially when you have room to play with when it comes to shutter speed.

If I was to review this image again, I would drop the ISO to 200 making the shutter speed 1/4000 of a sec. Then stop down the aperture 2 stops to f8 making the shutter speed 1/1000 of a sec. So f8 @ 1/1000 sec @ 200 iso would have been perfection. I still got a great image but it could have been better. This is why it is also important to review your images after your shoot to make sure you can see where you went wrong and right and make changes on your next shoot.

So when doing aerial photography shoot with an aperture F8 or over.