How to get a nice shot of the Milky Way from your airplane seat

A long plane ride at night will give you plenty of time to practice and perfect Jan Jasinski's technique for shooting starscapes from the comfort of your window seat:

It took me over 45 minutes and several attempts to get a clear photo of the aircraft's wingtip and the Milky Way — the task was very challenging given that there were some lights on in the cabin that would reflect in the window and onto my photos. My solution to overcoming the reflections was to use the complimentary black blanket given by the airline, putting it over my lens and pressing my camera up to the window.

Following that discovery, I opted for handheld exposures of 6 to 8 seconds each with the lens pressed hard against the window to stabilize it. Both my hands as well as my forehead were needed to stabilize the 5D Mark IV as much as possible during the long exposures.

Shooting a Handheld Milky Way Photo from an Airplane Seat (PetaPixel / Jan Jasinski)