What FL for a balloon trip ?

Weather permitting am going on a balloon flight in a few weeks time.
Any advice on focal lenghts gratefully received.

Davex.

Not too wide, I'd suggest, otherwise everything will look very far away, and there'll be no close foreground to add interest as one normally looks for with extreme wide angle shots.

I use a 28-200 for all my air-to-ground stuff, and it seems to be all I need.

Here are a few (not necessarily the whole frame) to give you an idea:

Didcot power station at 50mm:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Aviation/IMGP7617-1-smsh.jpg[/IMG]

Synchrotron at Harwell at 113mm:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Misc/IMGP7615-1-smsh.jpg[/IMG]

Cerne Abbas at 38mm:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Misc/IMGP5053-1smsh.jpg[/IMG]

And at 200mm, the Homer Simpson that some wags painted next to the Cerne Abbas Giant:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Misc/IMGP5047-1smsh.jpg[/IMG]

I took these from a height of about 2000 feet, cropping where necessary. You'll probably be lower than that, so the close stuff will be closer (vertically), and you won't be able to see quite as far horizontally.

Note the haze in the distance - long focal lengths are no good for getting good detail a long way away because of that. As you can see, 200mm can be very handy for detail that's quite close.

Let us know how you get on. At least you won't have to worry about reflections off the canopy

Thanks Chris, nice shots and good advice; which goes contrary to my instincts, but after thinking about it I can see your point.
Bu**er you have taken away my reason to buy a fisheye

Davex.

Well, if you wanted to get the people in the basket as well as the ground scenery, it might be quite fun.

Fisheyes aren't my thing, really, so I can't advise there.

The balloon will be going quite slowly, so you could take a whole load of shots at, say, 75mm, and build them into a synth. I reckon that would be very cool, and you'd get tons of detail as well as the panoramic aspect.