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The plane was at 70,000 feet, the balloon at 60,000. So that's about 2 miles below. My cellphone does not take photos that good from 2 miles away, how about yo
by btilly 4y ago
The plane was at 70,000 feet, the balloon at 60,000. So that's about 2 miles below. My cellphone does not take photos that good from 2 miles away, how about yours? So no, not a cellphone.
The U2 plane travels at about 500 mph and can't change that. (Look up "coffin corner" for why.) So even once you carefully place it to cast the shadow just right from 2 miles away, you have less than 0.2 seconds to get the photo with the plane's shadow placed on the balloon.
That's a very, very impressive photo!
- justin66 4y ago> The plane was at 70,000 feet, the balloon at 60,000. It was quite a bit closer. Just look at the sizes of various things in that photograph (the length of the plane's shadow vs. the length of the wingtip, both those vs the diameter of the balloon, etc.). If you read 70,000 somewhere, that's because they were quoting the plane's service ceiling.
- evan_ 4y agoI can photograph the ground from a commercial airplane window, so yes my phone can take pictures of things much further than 2 miles away. Distance from the subject isn’t really all that important provided it’s big enough, lit well and you can focus to infinity. The timing is tricky but 2/10 of a second isn’t an unthinkably brief window for snapping a photo, and if you use burst capture it’s trivial.