Haneda has a long night. Taxiway lights and terminal windows keep it bright enough that the shooting does not stop at sunset. Twenty-two frames from four separate evenings, on the same decks, with the shutter running from thirteen seconds to 1/30s.
21:05, starting at one second
21:05 on 31 August 2025. 120mm, one second, f4, ISO 100, on an aircraft at its stand with a ground vehicle beside it. At a full second nothing in the frame is moving, so nothing smears.
By 21:33 that same evening the shutter was at thirteen seconds. 120mm, f8, ISO 100, on the control tower. That was the longest exposure of the night.
Long exposures work because most of it is parked
A long exposure survives a night airport because most of what is in front of you is standing still. Aircraft on stand, jet bridges, fuel trucks. Only the tugs move, and the beacons blink, so several seconds still holds an edge.
On 6 September 2025 I worked from 21:16 to 22:05: an Air France 777, a row of JAL tails, a 787 in front of the hangar. Once the tripod is set and the frame is decided, the rest is waiting for a gap in the ground traffic.
The evening that started at 1/30s
28 March 2026 came at it from the other end. 18:28, 1/30s, f2.8, ISO 100. By 18:33 the ISO was at 1600, and the aperture had not moved off f2.8 all evening.
From 18:37 the shutter sat at 1/6s. Handheld, that is not a speed that freezes anything, but with the aircraft itself standing still it holds. The last frame, at 18:48, is 1/4s with the ISO pulled back down to 200.
Follow at 1/6s and the lights draw lines
Track a moving aircraft at 1/6s and the lights behind it stretch into lines. That is the frame at 18:38. The hit rate is poor, and this evening produced exactly one. The background looks nothing like a daytime pan.
When the outside is done, the inside is not
On 15 September 2025 the frames run from 19:49 to 20:10, looking down on the stands from the deck. By 22:05 on 6 September I had moved inside, into the Edo Koji arcade in Terminal 3. A night at the airport does not end when the outdoor work does.
In blossom season the terminal puts up seasonal displays; the frames at 18:28 and 18:30 on 28 March 2026 are one of them. That evening I started indoors and worked my way out to the stands.
Aviation and landscape commissions
Airport and landscape shoots start at ¥22,000 (tax incl.) for half a day. Tell me the aircraft or the light you want and we plan from there.