The first of many

[440_Magnum]

Re: The first of many

I'm at best a hack photographer, but I love plinking shutters and have come up with some lucky shots over the years. And I like reading up on photography.

Its funny how memory works, but every time I see a picture with the "stopped prop" effect, I remember back to an article from the 70s in, I believe, 'Air Progress.' I don't remember many details, but the name of the article was "A Pretty Picture of a Sea Fury." It was a blow-by-blow of an air-to-air shoot, with a lot of discussion about shutter speed (tradeoff between stopped motion of the prop and background vs. sharpness of the airframe), film speed (tradeoff between speed and graininess, and the fact that faster films allow for a tighter F-stop giving more depth of field) and camera plane / subject aircraft positioning. As I recall, the final result was pretty spectacular- a head-on shot of a Centaurus-powered Sea Fury in the air, enough prop blur to look pretty, but fast enough to show that there were 5 blades on the prop (but you sure couldn't read "Rotol" anywhere! ). In my memory, the Sea Fury had smoke generators on the wings, and the shutter speed chosen gave a very "silky" look to the smoke streams, but I may be mixing things from two different images I've seen over the years. It was that article that made me realize that there was so much more than just composition of the subject and background to photography.

[Victor Archer]

Re: The first of many

I am curious to learn from Victor and Tim, do you guys shoot in continuous or single shot mode? I feel as though I get better results concentrating on holding my aim and squeezing off one or two carefull shots, rather than "spray and pray." I tend to lose my hold on the target as the viewfinder image bounces around in continuous mode.
RG

First off, the T-Bird shot is awesome
Oh and don't forget about my little buddy Bill, he's been known to take a good shot or two Actually Bill was a great help to me when I first went digital
I shoot in continuous mode, BUT i usually only squeeze 2 or 3 off. I can shoot up to 28 frames at 5per sec. I see no reason to do so.
I agree on the loosing the target like that. There was a guy behind me shooting at 12per sec. in huge bursts. I couldn't imagine sorting through all that lot. I was at Reno three days longer than last year and shot 2000 less images.
As far as being creative I choose to do that earlier in the week as Sat/Sun are the most important days. Some aircraft don't matter as much to me so I tend to be a little more creative with them.

Funny about the aperture/depth of field thing. I'm taking a digital photography class a college right now. Trying to manipulate depth of field vs motion.....HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[fenceliner01]

Re: The first of many

No offense taken. I'll try to get more stuff posted, with an eye towards technique.

Mike A.
Fenceliner01

[ignomini]

Re: The first of many

Fenceliner,

Don't sweat the technique. I think most everyone here can appreciate the unique viewpoint from inside the pylons. Most of us never get to shoot anything but bellys.

The comments about the wings remind me of my Bear mod question; why don't they metalize the control surfaces? I can't believe there's no ill aerodynamic effect from all those dimples - unless its like a golf ball

RG

[Bill@Interstell]

Re: The first of many

Funny about the aperture/depth of field thing. I'm taking a digital photography class a college right now. Trying to manipulate depth of field vs motion.....HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

\

Hey... let me know what they have to say about that. I have a pretty strong backgroung with film and wet chemistry as my Dad is a well known photographer, but unitl recently I have avoided digital (at least still work) as I just don't see a way to have the same level of control. Resolution is now not so much of an issue so maybe the rest has come around too.

Claiming ignorance...


By the way, I was unable to purchase Kodachrome for the races this year and was told it has been discontinued. That's to bad as it was really the best color film available. Perhaps I'll try Fujichrome again or take the digital plunge. Seems a shame to waste all that nice glass I have though. Those old lenses aren't going to fit on any of the new digital camers.

[Wild Bill Kelso]

Re: The first of many

Oh come on you guys it's a model can't you see the fishing line?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I really did look for just ONE second.

[T. Adams]

Re: The first of many

I use pretty much the same method as Victor. Victor is shooting jpeg however, and the 20D can fire off a huge amount of shots before it starts to slow. I shoot RAW only, and the 20D can only fire off 6 shots at 5/sec before it slows to about 1 shot per second. The 20D writes images so fast to the CF card though, that if you just let off the shutter for about a second, you can then fire off another 6 shots.

I am not an expert on film by any means, but the aspect of having more control with film does not wash. If you shoot RAW, you have all the control, and more than you will ever need with PSCS, or the update PSCS2. Many nature photographers have dropped their medium format gear after the 16MP 1DsmkII came out. Of course it's $8,000 and way out of my league though.
One thing people over look is film cost and development. If I would have used film all summer I would be looking at development cost alone of about $3,500. No way I can afford that, and make it to all these airshows, and auto races.

[jarrodeu]

Re: The first of many

So Victor, How many shots did you take this year?
Jarrod

[T. Adams]

Re: The first of many

Don't know about Victor, but in eight days I ended up with about 4,400 pictures.

[Stevo]

Re: The first of many

Tim and I'm SURE Victor shot way more than my measly 2036 shot's this year... of course there was a few days where I never even left the American Air Racing hanger with my camera. I'm no mach for the Victor's/Bill's/Tim's anyway so I figured it was best I live that up to the pro's Great photo's guys

[W J Pearce]

Re: The first of many

I shoot jpeg, fine, continuous, auto AF-C, and no more than 1/500 for props. I do not shoot bursts. I can only get about 2 fps with a buffer of 8. My shutter black-out time is huge. My digital is 4 years old.

Generally I am always at 1/500 which is a bit faster than I like but it gets just enough prop blur to be okay and really helps with camera shake. I am also using a 50-500mm lens with no VR/IS/OS.

I shot aroun 2600 pics at Reno with about 100 non-air race related.

But hey, I like some of the ones I get.

[Bill@Interstell]

Re: The first of many

Wow nice shot! I like it too.

There was some discussion earlier about how fast this "stock" airframe goes, but it looks pretty damn clean to me. Note the extended radiator door is shut pretty tight, the sign of an excellent after market radiator and a significant drag reduction item. Clipped tips, wing root fairings, a very smooth wing. that doesn't look like a stock inlet to the scoop either.

What a plane!

Great effort this year Ridge Runner III !!!

[Smee Again]

Re: The first of many

Great shot, Mr. Pearce! Not that I'm biased or anything, but PLEASE, keep those RRIII shots coming!

As for the racing clean up done to RRIII, Bill's got just about all of them, and yes, a few were new additions for this year. But aside from "clipping" the wings and plugging the gun ports, there has been no other treatment whatsoever done to the wing surfaces. Dan just happens to have a very fast stocker which cleans up pretty nice for racing. When was the last time you saw ANY racer turn 470 laps with the gun blisters still in the wings? And next year she'll be back doing air shows as Maj. Pierce McKennon's stock 4th FG warbird, awaiting yet another chance to show her stuff at Reno. The ULTIMATE wolf in sheep's clothing!

SA
PS - Perhaps Mike "Sparrow" Barrow deserves a tiny bit of the credit?!

[ignomini]

Re: The first of many

Dear Mr. Pearce,

Sorry to have snubbed you by leaving you out of my original question group. I love your shot of Ridge Runner.

I think I can answer to the film vs. digital debate pretty well, as I shoot both at every event. I'm sorry to report to you film holdout types, the degree of control in digital far exceeds that with film. By way of example, you can go from ISO 50 to ISO 3200 and back from shot to shot. You can create parameter sets with different contrast, brightness, saturation levels, etc., and change those from shot to shot. All the while you still have total control over motion blur and DoF. Then, you still have everything programs like Photoshop can bring to post processing. Case closed.

Why then am I still shooting film? Stereo baby! 3D pics rule the roost.

Hey Bill@Interstell, give Fuji Provia a try. Admittedly it doesn't have the warmth of Kodachrome, but it produces rich, saturated colors in daylight, and holds on better than Kodachrome in shadows or low light.

I shot about 2,000 digitals, and 360 stereo pairs (aka 20 rolls of film) this year. Digitals may be "cheap," but it takes forever to troll through all the extra shots you never would have taken with film.

[T. Adams]

Re: The first of many

It really does not take that much time to sort. If you get a good RAW converter like Breezebrowser, it pulls up thumbnails is no time flat. Just use the arrow keys to sort, and click on the ones you want. Delete all the rest.

What takes time for those of us shooting RAW, is the conversion to 16bit TIFF, then the PS work. I have to convert each and every file I want to keep, then tweak in PS, because straight out of the camera the 10D and 20D files look like crap.