Nikon Z9 with the NIKKOR Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens captures Emirates Airbus A380 at 35,000 feet
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Emirates airlines Airbus A380 at 35K feet over Idaho
On a clear blue sky day, I was working in my backyard and noticed a few contrails overhead. I decided to take a look at the web site Flight radar 24 to see if anything interesting was approaching the Idaho area. Wow, what luck! Not one but 2 Airbus A380s were heading straight for Idaho.
When the largest passenger airliner in the world fly’s overhead, my aviation enthusiast mode kicks in! I immediately grabbed my Nikon Z9, got the TC-1.4x times Z TELE-CONVERTER and attached it to the Nikkor 800mm f/6.3 lens and returned to my backyard (Opens in new tab: To see all of my current gear, visit https://www.robertallen-photography.com/my-nikon-gear-list). One of the A380s had already passed over and was too far away to capture anything with sufficient resolution. Luckily, the other one was still approaching. I sat on the grass to maximize my stability while hand holding the Z9 and 800mm lens and pointed it all towards the approaching A380. The Z9 locked on using 3D auto focus with no problem and captured the above photo. Yes, the photo is cropped but not beyond the resolution that I exported it at which was 1750 pixels on the long end. This is where the 45 megapixels comes in handy with the Z8 and Z9 (and the Z7II).
One thing I have learned over the years photographing high altitude aircraft is that if the fuselage is white (as most are), it’s easy to blow it out. As you can see, this had a lot of white. Well, unfortunately, in my haste to get the shot, I over exposed this one a little. I had to work extra hard in Capture One to bring down the highlights while also preserving the sky and darker areas of the airplane, without making it look like its flying in outer space. That’s the nice thing about photography, there’s always next time.
Let’s talk about this particular A380 and the flight it was on. It’s first flight was in 2018. Its registration number is A6-EVG. More specifically, the model is the A380-842. The 842 designation signifies the types of engines used; high performance Rolls-Royce Trent 970/972 turbofans. These engines provide the highest maximum thrust among the A380 variants. It was flying from San Francisco (SFO) to Dubai (DXB). It left SFO 4:58PM local time and was scheduled to arrive at it’s destination at 7:47PM local. At the time that this photo was taken, it was flying at 540 mph at 35,000 feet and had a little over 14 hours left in the flight.
Let me know in the comments below your thoughts on the photo and if you have tried to take high altitude photos of aircraft.
On a clear blue sky day, I was working in my backyard and noticed a few contrails overhead. I decided to take a look at the site Flight radar 24 to see if anything interesting was approaching the Boise Idaho area. Wow, what luck! Not one but 2 Airbus A380s, the world’s largest passenger airplanes, were heading straight for Idaho.