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Air2air fotoz

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Fiveonepw(at)aol.com
Guest

Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 7:20 pm Post subject: Air2air fotoz



Howdy Listerpeople-

I've seen some mighty fine shots of RVs formating with foto ships, but I have

had, shall we say, less than spectacular results. Thought it was the camera

(1.3 Mpix Olympus), so Santa brought a Nikon 4600 (4 Mpix). Have taken some

"decent" shotz so far, but sure I can do better. Besides the usual suspects

such as glare elimination, composition, light angles etc., can anyone offer some

hints for optimizing air2air shotz with a digital camera, especially when

shooting through a not-so-optically-perfect plexi canopy? (Sam, Dan?)

Thanks for any hep!

Mark Phillips - N51PW, Columbia, TN

do not archive

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rv_8pilot(at)hotmail.com
Guest

Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 7:46 pm Post subject: Air2air fotoz



Lots of megapixels, clear vis, low angle evening or morning sunlight for

color and min shadows, decent background scenery with some contrasting

colors/patterns (white puffy clouds, green trees or land, blue ocean) and

*very* formation proficient so you can get in close and shoot a bunch of

pictures.

I'm not an expert, but have learned a few tricks after shooting quite a bit

of of video and photos. Write me off line for more details if you like.

Bryan Jones -8

www.LoneStarSquadron.com

Houston, Texas

 	  Quote: 	
		  From: Fiveonepw(at)aol.com

Reply-To: rv-list(at)matronics.com

To: rv-list(at)matronics.com

Subject: RV-List: Air2air fotoz

Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 22:20:23 EST

Howdy Listerpeople-

I've seen some mighty fine shots of RVs formating with foto ships, but I

have

had, shall we say, less than spectacular results. Thought it was the

camera

(1.3 Mpix Olympus), so Santa brought a Nikon 4600 (4 Mpix). Have taken

some

"decent" shotz so far, but sure I can do better. Besides the usual

suspects

such as glare elimination, composition, light angles etc., can anyone offer

some

hints for optimizing air2air shotz with a digital camera, especially when

shooting through a not-so-optically-perfect plexi canopy? (Sam, Dan?)

Thanks for any hep!

Mark Phillips - N51PW, Columbia, TN

do not archive

- The Matronics RV-List Email Forum -

Use the List Feature Navigator to browse the many List utilities available such as the Email Subscriptions page, Archive Search & Download, 7-Day Browse, Chat, FAQ, Photoshare, and much more:

http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?RV-List

rv7(at)b4.ca
Guest

Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 9:50 pm Post subject: Air2air fotoz



On 19:20:23 2006-01-05 Fiveonepw(at)aol.com wrote:

 	  Quote: 	
		   Besides the usual suspects such as glare elimination,

composition, light angles etc., can anyone offer some hints for

optimizing air2air shotz with a digital camera, especially when

shooting through a not-so-optically-perfect plexi canopy? (Sam, Dan?)

	


You've got the basics covered. Here's some other suggestions:

1. Find a heavy hunk of steel about the size of the base of your camera.

Drill a hole through it of appropriate size, and screw it into the tripod

mount on the bottom of your camera. Put a couple of felt protective "feet"

in between the camera and the steel to protect the camera. And be careful

to not screw the bolt into the camera too far. You may need some washers.

This will increase the weight of your camera, and with the weight it's

stability.

2. Increase your shutter speed. 1/200 or 1/250 is good for getting a nice

prop sweep, but is hard to hand-hold with a point-and-shoot camera, even

with the extra weight. 1/500 will sharpen things up a bit, and still leave

*some* prop sweep visible.

3. Tell #2 to tighten it up. You want to be shooting the camera with the

zoom somewhere in the middle of it's range. The zooms on digicams don't

really get enough light at full telephoto, so you have to open the aperture

to get more light to the sensor, which robs your depth-of-field. You may

find that what looks like camera shake is just a blurry photo because the

focus isn't exact.

4. Finally, focus. The autofocus on digicams isn't the most reliable.

There are distinct "steps" in the autofocus, and it's possible to get your

subject in between two steps. At one it's out of focus, and as it moves to

the next step it gets sharp and then goes out of focus again. Having the

largest depth-of-field you can get helps with this. Taking a dozen photos

one after the other as the planes jockey for position around one another

also helps... One good photo in 12 and you're doing as well as many pro

photographers.

Here's my last air-to-air mission, coming up on two years ago:

http://b4.no-ip.org:8080/airframe/events/20040417 CYGB/thumb3.html

All photos were taken with a Nikon Coolpix 8700, with the extra battery

pack/vertical grip (the extra weight is like having the steel lump I

suggested above). The photo ship was a Piper Tri-Pacer with the rear

passenger door removed, and me tethered to the seatbelt anchor with a

climbing harness. Great fun!

-Rob Prior

- The Matronics RV-List Email Forum -

Use the List Feature Navigator to browse the many List utilities available such as the Email Subscriptions page, Archive Search & Download, 7-Day Browse, Chat, FAQ, Photoshare, and much more:

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gyoung(at)cs-sol.com
Guest

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 7:28 am Post subject: Air2air fotoz



Rob,

Good photos, good subjects. As a Navion driver too, I thank you.

Regards,

Greg Young - Houston (DWH)

RV-6 N6GY ...project Phoenix

Navion N5221K - just an XXL RV-6A

Do not archive

- The Matronics RV-List Email Forum -

Use the List Feature Navigator to browse the many List utilities available such as the Email Subscriptions page, Archive Search & Download, 7-Day Browse, Chat, FAQ, Photoshare, and much more:

http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?RV-List

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