Flying Legends Sunday

What are you useing to edit/crop/touch the photos? the camera or photo shop? and how long are you spending on them in total as ive got to admit im not happy with mine.

Excellent stuff Gareth… 😀

Hope to see those on Anet soon.
I’ve had to pass on Dux AND Fairford this year to to moving house, but I’ll hopefully get to Grandsden, Sywell and the rest of the OW shows this year.

Now where did I put my camera gear……………… 😮

they are all good man!

Gareth, thats been most useful to know, I now seek a decent 300mm tele for my 20D, Canon zoom at £1000 can wait !
DBenz

Actually, its an Me-108 😉

Er! Wrong!!!!!!

Gareth, thanks for the info and details of your shooting. They are all well done and again thanks for taking the time to share them……

Lynn

The EXIF is still embedded in all the images Lynn, you can view them all at
http://www.pbase.com/gareth_horne/legends2006&page=1 , just click the ‘full exif’ if necessary.

Dbenz, the vertical Buchon shot is about about 1.1 million pixels (out of 12.2) so yes its a pretty major crop, so not much use for printing at any worthwhile resolution. Its rare for me to crop much but this shows what’s possible when necessary. The D2X has a digital crop factor very similar to yours (1.5) so the 300mm has a field of view equivalent to 450mm in 35mm terms. It also has a high speed crop mode which uses the centre 6.8 million pixels (plenty of resolution for most uses) with a digital crop of 2.0 (that’s 600mm F2.8 if you are still thinking in 35mm field of view!) Its occasionally useful but to be honest I don’t (need to) use it that much.

My lens is rather old now (10 years) so its pretty heavy (steel and brass, rather than aluminium and carbon fibre of the new models) and no image stabilisation. Shutter speed wise I tend to stick to 1/320th or 1/250th, any lower than that and my failure rate tends to be rather high! Any more than 1/320th gives the dreaded frozen blade syndrome. Its just a case of practising your panning technique until you can go low enough. Didn’t use one this weekend but a monopod can be useful for panning take off shots etc and is probably good for another stop or 2 of shutter speed. The head on spitfire was shot at 1/320th, which given the engine is at full take off power, will give acceptable amounts of prop blur.

My other telephoto lens is a 70-200 F2.8 lens which has image stabilisation. Its a great, flexible lens for a lot of stuff ( and with a 1.4x converter gives me 280mm F4 image stabilised) but I’d always choose the prime even without image stabilisation, it really is that good.

I used to meter the same as you in film days but not any more. Exposure wise the D2X is just about spot on in all situations (standard matrix metering, add about +0.3 for flying aircraft, bit more for dark subjects, bit less for silver/white subjects), much, much better than anything else I’ve ever used. I do check the histograms regularly when shooting, to push it as far to the right as possible without blowing the important highlights.

Always shoot raw of course (when shooting for myself, if someone wants some quick photos I’ll use large fine jpg) so yes they’ve all had levels, highlight/shadow adjustment, and USM, but I don’t spend long on each image, once they are all set most are batched with little tweaking to each.

Hope that’s of some interest to you, prior to getting the 300mm (second hand) I used a 50-500mm sigma. I got some great photos with it and for flexibility it takes some beating. Once I’d used a fast prime though (even one considerably shorter), I’d never go back.

Gareth, yes please, could we get the full exif on the shot’s??
Thanks for sharing them.

Lynn

Gareth, the quality of your pics is stunning. If thats a 300mm lens after cropping then it speaks lots for the idea of a fixed focal length lens and crop for effect versus such zoom beasts as £1000 of 100-400 IS Canon. What shutter speed was the red nosed spitty, and what digital crop factor are you getting. My 20D is 1.6 so with a 300mm lens thats an effective 480mm and so for no camera shake it requires 1/500 and that kills blade blur. So how is it done ? Is it that the lens has Image Stabiliser and that is enough to drop the shutter speed for that lovely prop blur yet kill any hand shake ?

Also lighting is absolutely spot on, I used to meter on an average scene (grass), then set that manually, else one second a spitfire and sky prompts one setting then a B17 hogging the viewfinder prompts another one, yet we all know the incident light is what to use. Changing light on the aircraft during a fly by caused problems though. That was in the days of my 35mm SLR, is that still the best way with DSLR ? Again what method do you use ? Have you been tweaking much the raw files for shadow detail and levels in post processing, adding usm etc ?

DBenz

Actually, its an Me-108 😉

It most certainly is not!

To be strictly accurate it’s a Hispano HA-1112-M1L, but the closest equivalent in German production was a Bf109G-2

LOL – yep, looks like it! Think somebody got their lines a bit wrong don’t you? (made for some great photography though)

great Gareth !!!

I beleive we are close, here my dak

I think that was me on the historic forum, thanks for the explanation and glad she got back to Breighton with no hiccups. Cheers Davski 🙂

Hi Ant,
‘Susy’ had a magneto failure on Saturday due to heat sink (as a result of the length of time it was held on the ground with the engine running in the heat) and although it was OK once it had cooled it was too risky to chance flying it at high temps during the display. Its normal flight home posed no probs for Taff and will not affect its planned displays at Breighton during the weekend. (Where, incidentally, we now have the OFMC’s Spitty booked for both days).

Will post this on the historix thread too…

Nice one Gareth – don’t forget your camera at the weekend!!

Actually, its an Me-108 😉

Very nice! What camera / lens do you use?

thanks, they were taken on a D2X with a 300mm Nikkor lens.

Last one for Davski, massive crop from the original so excuse the quality, its great to see a 109 on the circuit again 🙂

great pictures there:)

James

I like the Hurri/Buchon image too…

Can’t remember which thread mentioned the ‘Susy’ no show on Sunday but I believe they had an intermittent fault with one of the magnetos. Tony cautiously flew her home on Sunday with no further problems.

I think that was me on the historic forum, thanks for the explanation and glad she got back to Breighton with no hiccups. Cheers Davski 🙂

Great shots!

I like the Hurri/Buchon image too…

Can’t remember which thread mentioned the ‘Susy’ no show on Sunday but I believe they had an intermittent fault with one of the magnetos. Tony cautiously flew her home on Sunday with no further problems.

Great stuff, love the shot of the Hurricane chasing the Buchon, and the extreme close up of RN201! 🙂