Due to the aerial camera CCD (charge coupled device) existing limited dynamic range, it cannot reveal all the details in a high-dynamic range scene. To solve this problem, this paper presents a multi-exposure fusion method based on illumination estimation in complex wavelet domain. First, a set of multi-exposure images are obtained by multiple expose in the same scene, and register these images using the fast small-area registration strategy based on SURF (speeded up robust feature). Then the illumination of these images is estimated. In complex wavelet domain, weights according to the illumination are assigned to the low component for fusion; and weighted regional energy based fusion rule is adopted for high component fusing. Finally, fused image is acquired by subjecting the low and high component to inverse DT-CWT. The results obtained by this method are performing well in spatial frequency, figure definition, average gradient and edge preservation information. Experiments demonstrate that images obtained by this paper have appropriate brightness and preserve the details and edges effectively. It is suitable for varied high dynamic range scenes and conforms to the requirements of aviation investigation.