LGW 28 Dec 2008

Nice shots & good advice from those in the know! Never even knew we had Montenegro Airlines at Gatwick!

I always prefer LGW on 08R operations as it allows more intimacy with the aircraft and also the choice of ground and/or air shots. Also it’s good all day – just a shame there are no nearby facilities. Ah well.

Is it a DC 747 or a Boeing 10???

It’s a McDonnell Boeing 7410, Steve. 😀

Paul

Yip, purpose built and not a real aircraft.

Is it a DC 747 or a Boeing 10???

I don’t think the contributor should beat himself up much about quality (within reason of course).

Of course. Learning isn’t about beating yourself up and doing so gets no-one anywhere (however much you will naturally beat yourself up at times!) That said, at the moment we’re talking about improving quality; not making viewers happy and the only way to improve quality is to practice and improve your knowledge. As I mentioned previously, once you have enough practice behind you that you’re producing consistent quality results then you can start being selective but you have to get to a certain level first, and we’re trying to help Andrew get to that level. 🙂

Paul

Paul
I think everything you say is entirely true and would be even more so if it were a purely photographic forum but it’s related to a magazine for the civil spotter/enthusiast and I wonder how many people who visit this site are a tad disappointed at the constant “repeat” subject matter from the same half dozen airports?
It’s just nice to see some stuff even from LGW and from a good position at that and I don’t think the contributor should beat himself up much about quality (within reason of course).

Barry

and for it to be rare.There’s a danger of competing for the perfect shot of EZY or FR………remember an Easyjet A319 is boring and remains so however well one can see the Captain waving from the window in the partial shot.

In all honesty the only major site really where you tend to get rejections for an aircraft being ‘too common’ is A.Net. JP and others will readily accept a ‘boring Easyjet A319’ as long as the quality is there, and remember also that shooting any aircraft is good practice. It doesn’t matter how boring it is. If you stand next to the runway at LHR and take 20 photos in succession of BA A319’s, the last photos you take will probably be better than the first. Had you decided not to shoot them because they’re boring aircraft, you wouldn’t have seen that improvement.

I think it’s extremely important when learning all this stuff to shoot as much as you can. I don’t mean take 10 frames of every movement, but do shoot every movement. You’re limiting your own development if you don’t and once the technical aspects of shooting and editing start to come together, then you can start being selective. To use another musical analogy, it may be boring playing Mustang Sally when you first start playing with bands because there isn’t much going on, but you’ll learn something new every time you do play it. 🙂

Paul

Hi Andrew
Having not posted for some time I couldn’t resist this chance.I agree with Josh…..for someone apologising for their pics,I think they’re excellent and at least there’s some different material particularly the Montenegro FK100.
I take thousands of pics a year but really for my own pleasure.I’m not seeking critical acclaim but the one thing I can tell you is that if you want to get any published or accepted by the sites to which you refer it helps to have a full
(not partial) a/c and for it to be rare.There’s a danger of competing for the perfect shot of EZY or FR………remember an Easyjet A319 is boring and remains so however well one can see the Captain waving from the window in the partial shot………. or as Obama said,you can put lipstick on a Ryanair pig….it’s still a Ryanair pig!!

Most of the visitors to this site would be very happy with a “goodish” pic of a gem……..keep up the good work

Barry

Nice shots Andrew, really nice

Infact the weather has been so perfect the last couple of days, makes me want to get up there!!!

All the best
Josh

Hi all,

Thanks for all the advice (and encouragement!)

The BA 777 is relatively easy to fix (or will be in future – looking at the originals that one was unfortunately a non-starter because I’d zoomed in too far in the first place).

I’m having a bit of trouble getting the USM to work. I might need to reinstall the program or something because whenever I try and use it I get a message saying “An Internal Error has Occurred”. Once I have some new shots I’ll upload them here 🙂

As for the fire training rig… Let’s imagine a 747 mixed with a DC10…

One last point – I can strongly recommend the Runway 08 Crash Gate spot at Gatwick from where these shots were taken. The lighting was great and the traffic was quite interesting during the late morning because most of what I was photographing on departure had arrived well before I could have arrived.

Thanks again for all the feedback. I really appreciate you all giving your time!

Andrew

I use:

Amount: 128%
Radius: 0.5
Threshold: 0

To each there own 🙂

Absolutely. That will also work. 🙂

And, the pictures on here don’t look over-sharpened to me, there is no sign of glitter/sparkly bits, even in the bare trees behind – an area likely to show up sparkle.

They are oversharpened and will be rejected from any aviation photography website for that reason. The classic signs of this are excessive jaggies in the titles and diagonal lines and an almost ‘halo’ effect on things like the edges of the fuselage (although not the same kind of halo you get through over-use of the shadow-highlight tool, which I’m sure you’re familiar with). The thread starter seems to want to improve his work, so that’s what we’re trying to help him do. 🙂

PMN (And tuthers)…..what are you looking at to judge over-sharpening?

My eyes, hundreds if not thousands of hours with photoshop and 120,000+ frames of digital experience on 1 megapixel Kodak point and shoots, Nikon D2x’s and pretty much everything in between. That’s all I need really! That said, being a photo screener on an aviation photography website helps as well because I’m looking for imperfections all the time. In fact it’s exactly the same really as the way as I judge what does and doesn’t sound good when I’m mixing a band or playing in one. Experience tells me naturally whether it sounds harsh, dull, too loud, etc. When I see a photo on the screen in front of me, I know simply by looking at it whether it’s oversharpened or not because I’ve spent probably an average minimum of 2 hours every day, most days for the last 4 years editing images.

Well you did ask! :p

Paul

I use:

Amount: 128%
Radius: 0.5
Threshold: 0

To each there own 🙂

We’ve been here before….I use 25% (Or less) at a time and nudge it up. It gives a better result as you are not destroying the pix. with one hit….and you can step it back using the history tools.

And, the pictures on here don’t look over-sharpened to me, there is no sign of glitter/sparkly bits, even in the bare trees behind – an area likely to show up sparkle. I agree on the composition though.

PMN (And tuthers)…..what are you looking at to judge over-sharpening?

Some fantastic pics there mate, the 2 75’s stand out to me.

Fire Training rig??

James

Yip, purpose built and not a real aircraft.

Some fantastic pics there mate, the 2 75’s stand out to me.

Nice shots..what is the beast in the background of the F28 shot??

Fire Training rig??

James

Nice shots..what is the beast in the background of the F28 shot??

Nice shots.

I do agree with the comments about the cropping, though I do think that the colours are brilliant, and there’s plenty of contrast as well. 🙂

It has a USM tool, so I’d be interested to try out your “catch almost all” values!

USM actually seems to vary from program to program; USM in GIMP is very different to USM in Photoshop so I can’t guarantee this will work in the program you use, but if I shoot JPEG these settings work for 95% of the images I shoot:

Amount: 100%
Radius: 0.3 (increased to around 0.6-0.7 for a full sized image of, say, 3500 pixels wide)
Threshold: 0

As I say, I’m not sure what your program will do but in any version of Photoshop that should work well. 🙂

Paul

Hi Paul,

That’s great advice. The shots are all cropped from the originals by 10 to 20 percent so there’s lots of room to repair that element.

I use Fireworks. I just use the standard “sharpen” feature which would explain the over sharpening. It has a USM tool, so I’d be interested to try out your “catch almost all” values!

Obviously I’m quite happy with my shots for my own personal collection and haven’t really spent much time editing before. I’d like to start uploading to the large web databases so your advice is invaluable.

Thanks for your help,

Andrew

Hi Andrew

Please dont feel like your pictures arent as good as others

There is no rejections here and photographer’s can post there shots whether they are great or poor and as paul just did we can give others advice if needed

I think they are great photo’s and with the advice like Paul gave you will be soon posting even better shot’s

keep up the great work

Rob
🙂

Hi Andrew,

Nice work! Just a couple of things I’d mention. The first being they’re all slightly oversharpened. What sharpening technique are you using? This is often one of the aspects of digital photography that’s the hardest to get right. Are you using Photoshop to edit? If so, I’ll give you some quick USM settings that should work for the majority of what you’re shooting.

Secondly, composition. They’re generally good but the one that stands out as needing improvement to me is the BA 777. The engines are quite important to the balance of the image, but here you’ve cropped right through them. There are a number of ways you can compose your image from such an angle and still maintain a balance. Crop equally to the engines, so there’s an almost symmetric balance:

Or crop to the fuselage on one side and the engine on the other:

It’s a little hit and miss whether angles like the second are accepted or rejected from sites like Jetphotos. I’ve had some accepted and some rejected; it seems to depend on how they feel at the time (but that’s just life and isn’t really a problem). Nonetheless, it does have a compositional balance.

Stick at it, though. You’re really not far from producing very good results!

Paul