good shots mate = at least it stayed dry for you southside……

Tony,

My answer to your question……use Camera RAW!

This way, any mis-haps with exposre can be corrected in post processing. Its like having the exposure compensation on your PC rather than the camera. If you are lucky enough to have Adobe Photoshop CS or CS2 then your camera is supported.

Many photographers will say there is no need to use camera RAW but I wouldn’t use anything else..EVER! I came back from a days shooting in Manchester last week and due to adverse lighting I was able to “re-expose” all my shots automatically, by only adjusting the first one by adding 2 extra stops of light. Photoshop then applied the adjustment to every image I processed.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t always an ideal situation and at all times its best to try and acheive the best image we can under the conditions that we are taking the shot.

If you have any questions please dont hesitate to drop me a line

Mark

Not such a stupid question at all…..I think I would be backed-up by anyone when I say we probably all have a different reason why we started. In some cases its even questionable as to whether we even started at all, as all will become clear.
I was introduced to aviation and spotting back in 1981 when LBA was my local and the only jet movement was a Britannia Boeing 737 (usually G-BAZI or G-AVRN) and the rest of the time we had to put up with Air Anglia/Air Uk Fokker F-27 Freindships and a a BMI Viscount (G-AZNC & G-BAPF the only two I can remember) – in between all this was a visit from a Dan-Air (thats an old airline for all you young ones) Bae-748 that did the run from Bristol & Cardiff.
I remember a mate at school (aka Neil Ross) said what you doing after school – Im going to the airport, for the sake of it I tagged along. I wasnt even aware that aircraft had registrations let alone it was a hobby to collect them.
I remember buying my first “CAM” (Civil Aircraft Markings) – £1.95 from the airport bookshop and starting to underline in red everything I saw
In 1989 all this stopped as things got out of hand when I went to work airside at Manchester Airport. People will say, are you mad! – no, I found it really frustrating that when not on shift all the things I missed. And when on shift all the things I missed because I was too busy despatching aircraft.
So two years ago after moving back to Yorkshire from the South West I decided that I would expand my aviation photography by underlining once more. I decided that I would only underline what I photographed as an alternative to my original and normal concept of spotting. I constantly argue with my wife as she states I’m a spotter and I say I’m a photographer…..well you decide!

If anyone is interested I have a small Blog (which hasnt been updated for a few weeks) which contains some articles regarding “My Way” of doing things including a wicked system for tracking photographs on your PC relating to aircraft reg/airline etc…
if you follow this link http://www.spottersblog.com/?w=mwphotography

Anyway, just thought I would let you all know my thoughts and inspirations on this marvellous pastime…and on that note…as far as I am concerned – there is no right way, and no wrong way – just your own way.

Mark

RAW

Hi Jon,

I have found that RAW works well for me, especially in PS CS2 – I do more than aviation photography and often use large prints – RAW far outclasses JPEG when it comes to printing and at the sizes I am talking about this is clearly visible.

Shaprness adjustment at the RAW stage in PS is far better than traditional sharpening in JPEG format – along with the option to adjust multiple images in one movement, this is a time saving job for me.

In the end, everyone has a system and if you are happy with it then good for you, I have a library of pure RAW files, and should i need to reproduce an image for a customer at a later date they can have that image as dark and as light as they want and i know that i have practically full control of the camera tools after the shot has been taken within camera RAW.

Good luck mate

Images from the 24th

Thought i’d put mine in there as well…….excuse the similarity folks

Enjoy folks – we did, fab weather for once