It was a much better day for photography today on Beachy head, if a little windy at times. As always the pilots put on a great display for us all on the cliffs, although fewer aircraft appeared round the lighthouse than last year which was a bit of a shame. Got some reasonable photos nonetheless.
The Chinook Display Team kicked things off by swinging by and posing for us all before the air display began, I think they were having some fun flinging the thing around before running in on the flight line. Nice one.
The two Lancs and BBMF Spitfires were beautiful against the opposite cliffs and sea. The sound of those two Lancs together is something you have to hear if you get the chance.
Highlight of the day had to be being bounced by a Red Arrow who flew right over the top of Beachy head at no more than maybe 100ft, scared the life out of me and I totally failed to get a shot of it but it’s not an experience I’ll forget any time soon. Those guys certainly know how to give a show.
I put a small album up on Flickr: https://flic.kr/s/aHsk1XNT4v
Here are a few selected images:
IMG_0499 by sboreeves, on Flickr
IMG_0513 by sboreeves, on Flickr
IMG_0536 by sboreeves, on Flickr
IMG_0549 by sboreeves, on Flickr
IMG_0556 by sboreeves, on Flickr
IMG_0658 by sboreeves, on Flickr
IMG_0670 by sboreeves, on Flickr
IMG_0678 by sboreeves, on Flickr
IMG_0723 by sboreeves, on Flickr
By: longshot - 21st August 2014 at 00:15
Well done!!..Beachy Head the Machynlleth of the South?
By: victor tango - 20th August 2014 at 19:28
SimonR
I cant get to these airshow places, so to see photographs of very good quality taken by yourself and others on this site is for me the next best thing to being there.
Please keep up the good work as its very much appreciated. Thank you.
VT
By: SimonR - 19th August 2014 at 22:21
Nah – you’re fine with a UV filter on the lens, I have them on all mine.
How ever did we manage with film?! I’m afraid I never did – I got into photography in my early 20’s when I first got an EOS 300D. Don’t think I’d be any good with film 😉
Anyway, cheers for now, enjoy!
By: AlanR - 19th August 2014 at 07:12
Thanks for that Simon, it’s really appreciated. I’m using a Nikon D3300 and Nikkor 55-300 lens, which I only bought a couple
of months ago. Fitted with UV filter, which perhaps I should leave off ?
I did wonder about using either shutter or aperture priority, so that gives me something to experiment with.
I shoot in RAW + JPEG, which covers most options, and usually delete around 60% of what I take.
(how did we ever manage with film ?).
You do have to be careful processing RAW images don’t you ? I’m using Lightroom, and It’s so easy to get carried away
and over process an image.
On the other hand, you can recover some decent images that would otherwise be consigned to the trash folder.
By: SimonR - 18th August 2014 at 23:23
The advantage of being at Beachy head, is that you aren’t constantly trying to take
photos into the sun.I’d be interested to know what lens , and which settings you mainly use.
Hi Alan,
You’re right – Beachy head is perfectly placed for the sun, even taking shots the other way, towards the lighthouse is pretty good for most of the day. I also love being either alongside or even looking down on the aircraft as they fly by. It’s a rare opportunity!
Kit wise it’s fairly modest by comparison to some – Mainly a Canon EOS 600D and EF 70-300 lens. I shoot only in RAW these days which gives a lot more chance to improve the look of a shot in Photoshop, eg by increasing the colour saturation a little, correcting for a dull day, or one of the things that makes the most difference, increasing the detail in shadows/highlights. It makes a lot off difference to have a 16-bit image to play around with because you can alter it a lot more before it starts to look wrong. I don’t bother with ‘airbrushing’-type alterations very often though but occasionally will remove the odd imperfection.
Settings-wise, with prop aircraft I’ll use shutter priority (TV) and choose anything between 1/180 and 1/320 depending on how much prop movement I want to show, how fast that particular aircraft’s prop is spinning and how sharp I think I can get it. For jets I tend to shoot in aperture-priority mode (AV), using a couple of stops up from fully open (so nearly the smallest number) but again, that depends on what depth of field I’m after and if I think I’ll get (or want to) the whole aircraft in focus.
ISO-wise, I always try to keep it as low as possible because I sometimes like to apply HDR effects to my images and you really notice the noise in the images after about 400 (or even 200) ISO.
I really enjoy the challenge of thinking through how to ‘construct’ the image (e.g. depth of field and movement) and a lot of the time I end up throwing away quite a lot of images – e.g. on Saturday I took about 600 shots and have found about 75 that I really like and perhaps the same again that can be made into something. The rest are just taking up valuable disk space 😉
Cheers for now!
By: AlanR - 18th August 2014 at 22:35
Nice pictures Simon. The advantage of being at Beachy head, is that you aren’t constantly trying to take
photos into the sun.
I’d be interested to know what lens , and which settings you mainly use.
By: GliderSpit - 18th August 2014 at 22:08
Very nice!
By: trekbuster - 18th August 2014 at 22:07
Funny how lots of people look at the photos but very few take the time to comment…
Why should you expect me to comment?
The images are OK but…
Are you posting the images to help those less fortunate than yourself get some pleasure from the event?
Or expecting praise every time?
The former is commendable, the latter……
I personally don’t feel qualified to comment on the technical quality of images I look at. So I don’t
By: SimonR - 18th August 2014 at 21:09
Thanks for replying, Anna.
Funny how lots of people look at the photos but very few take the time to comment…
By: Flygirl - 16th August 2014 at 19:42
Nice shots.
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August 16, 2014 at 7:12 pm
