How to photoraph high flying aircraft with a nikon dslr?

How to photoraph high flying aircraft with a nikon dslr? - 1

You need to buy the biggest telephoto lens you can afford and a good tripod.

The same as you would with any DSLR, get a lens that's long enough, and learn how to track a moving subject.

It's technique, not kit.

You could use a telephoto lens with a large aperture, such as the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 G ED VRII AF-S, but that goes for about $2,000 USD.

Depending on what camera you use, or the shooting environment, you could use a cheaper lens, like a Nikkor 55-200 f/4.5-5.6 VR AF-S, If you were shooting in good light during the day because of its smaller aperture.

For really high flying aircraft, you need a telescope and a T mount for the camera.

How high?

I'm shooting an airshow tomorrow using a Nikkor 400 mm d/2;8 lens and as the aircraft fly by the viewing stands, I will be getting about 3/5ths of the frame filled with the aircraft leaving enough room ahead of the aircraft without chopping off its tail section.

If you are asking about an aircraft at 30,000 feet or more, the only possibility would be to use the amazing Nikkor 800 mm f/5.6 lens with included 1.25x Teleconverter. That lens only costs $16,400… Or maybe a nice Newtonian telescope (1000 mm) mounted on a gimble could work.

Here is a link that shows you what various focal length lenses "see"

This may help you determine which lens you will want to rent before you buy.

The second link shows you the choices you have when buying Nikkor lenses and what they cost

Learn photography & you will learn that the craft has little to do with what brand equipment you use.

Patiently with a long telephoto lens and a stable tripod.

I can shoot the moon with my Nikon P600!
Aircraft are possible if they're not moving that fast and you have a steady hand. Passenger jets are the most easy.

"High flying" is vague. How high is high?
At 36,000 feet, you'd need to use a very strong telephoto lens which you can rent from lensrental.com and other places too. Or, you'd need to use a spotting scope or a telescope. Preferably a spotting scope because it's easier to focus than a telescope. Plus they're smaller, lighter and easier to maneuver on when mounted on a tripod.

If you will be using a lens with auto focus capabilities, then you'll need to use a single focusing point. The sky is very low in contrast which makes it very difficult to impossible for most DSLRs to focus on it. Therefore you will need to either manual focus if the plane is very small in the frame. If you can fill the frame by somewhere around 25% or so with the plane, then turn on all of the focusing points and let the camera choose where to focus.

As far as exposure is concerned, the sky is brighter than the middle-gray tone that meters are calibrated to. Therefore you will either need to use manual exposure or about +1 of exposure compensation.

You will need to decide how much blur you want in the shot. Depending upon how much of the frame the plane is occupying, and how strong of lens you're using, and whether you're using a tripod or hand held, the shutter speed will need to be fast or slow. Hand-held work with a plane that's just a dot in the frame requires a shutter speed that 1.5x the focal length to prevent camera shake if you're not using a lens with VR. If the plane is filling up the frame, then you may need a faster shutter shutter speed around 1/800th or faster. If the plane is filling up the frame and it uses propellers, then using too fast of a shutter speed will actually stop the propellers making the plane look like it's suspended in mid air. You want the photo to have some sense of speed, so a slower shutter speed with a panning motion will be required. The panning motion will keep the plane steady while blurring the background, and the slow-er shutter speed will help with this blur along with the blur of any propellers. If the plane is a jet, you'd still want to use a slow-er shutter speed to cause the background to blur as you pan with the motion of the plane. How slow? That's subjective, but it could be anything from 1/15th to 1/125th depending upon your tastes, how fast the plane is moving and how much of the frame it's filling too.