Author Topic: Sheppard AFB Airshow Pics (Read 333 times)

eagl · « **on:** October 19, 2007, 08:38:16 PM »

Some pics I took during our "CAF Day" event Fri 19 Oct before the airshow on Sat 20 Oct. The camera is my Nikon D50, using either the D70 kit lense or a nikkor 55-200 AF-S ED lense. They were taken pretty much at sunset so sharpness, color, contrast, and brightness are all a little off. Plus, my 55-200 lense freaks out sometimes when focusing on aircraft so I lost what should have been some great shots when the focus pulled to minimum and quit trying.

Here's the first - an F-22 on takeoff. Because of the clear day and dark colors, it sure looks photoshopped. But it's real. All I've done here is resize and added a little sharpening.

I'll post more as I convert them from raw format and retouch as necessary.

eagl · « **Reply #1 on:** October 19, 2007, 08:51:32 PM »

I thought this would be neat, but I need a better lense and need to figure out how to avoid the focus problems I had. I lost 3 chances for better versions of this due to the autofocus freaking out. This is heavily cropped and slightly sharpened.

eagl · « **Reply #2 on:** October 19, 2007, 08:57:20 PM »

There is a lot of detail in this one in the full size image.

Another look.

That's it for now... I'm not happy with the rest of my pics due to various composition or lighting problems. Maybe I can fix some with post processing, but I need to get some sleep before the airshow tomorrow.

AquaShrimp · « **Reply #3 on:** October 19, 2007, 09:24:31 PM »

I like the first one the best, the light reflecting off the F-22s fuselage creates a neat effect. But you are right, it does look photoshopped.

eagl · « **Reply #4 on:** October 19, 2007, 09:50:46 PM »

Yea. Not sure how to deal with that. I have a couple other pics taken at 1 sec intervals including one that shows a radar in the foreground, but the plane is smaller/farther away so it would have to be cropped and enhanced more carefully.

The lighting is neat though. I think adjusting the white balance and brightness/contrast/saturation would help since the sky *should* be blue, but I don't have much experience doing that so I'd be pretty much experimenting with random settings trying to make it look nice.

I had been using adobe lightroom beta before, but the beta expired and they went to a fairly expensive version 1.0 before they even got a multi-monitor workspace functioning. I am trying to figure out gimp but it's just a bit too complicated for an amature like me. For example, "crop" doesn't mean the same thing in gimp as it does in every other consumer-level image editing package. Even adobe lightroom and photoshop elements has a way to do dumb cropping by selecting a region and choosing a "crop" menu option. In gimp, trying to crop simply fuxors the layer and you're left with the same size image you had before, but the part of the image outside the cropped area is checkerboard gray. I want the part outside the cropped area to go the hell away, like it does with every other intuitive piece of software in the freaking world.

But I guess gimp is aimed at another type of user. So crop doesn't actually mean "crop", it means "screw with the current layer and mess up the image so an amature can't do a damn thing with it and has to start over".

Mark Luper · « **Reply #5 on:** October 19, 2007, 10:04:52 PM »

I bought lightroom and really like a lot of the features in it. I havn't mastered it by any stretch of the imagination but I have received an update recently. I don't know what it updated or added though because it looks and works pretty much as it did before.

Mark

eagl · « **Reply #6 on:** October 19, 2007, 10:16:43 PM »

I have one decent monitor and one crummy one, and I'd really like to be able to have the image full-screen on the good monitor and have all the tool choosers and menus on the second one. That makes a lot of sense to me. But lightroom puts everything in one window. Or at least it did in the last beta version I got. I think lack of multi-monitor support was one of the biggest gripes in the beta forums, but there was never any hint that they'd do anything about it.

rpm · « **Reply #7 on:** October 19, 2007, 11:16:33 PM »

You guys know the Alliance Air Show is this weekend.

Admission is free.

Mark Luper · « **Reply #8 on:** October 19, 2007, 11:20:52 PM »

On that last closeup shot, that largish panel just above the nose gear sure seems to have a lot of leading edge mismatch.

Mark

Mark Luper · « **Reply #9 on:** October 19, 2007, 11:21:32 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by rpm
You guys know the Alliance Air Show is this weekend.

Admission is free.

Yeah, I have to work this weekend, gonna miss it.

Mark

rpm · « **Reply #10 on:** October 19, 2007, 11:39:18 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Mark Luper
Yeah, I have to work this weekend, gonna miss it.

Mark

Same here.

RAIDER14 · « **Reply #11 on:** October 20, 2007, 09:01:03 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by rpm
You guys know the Alliance Air Show is this weekend.

Admission is free.

I'll be there but I wish it wasn't free.........btw nice pics eagl

Hien · « **Reply #12 on:** October 20, 2007, 09:08:10 AM »

You know, I really didn't think there would be anyone else that plays Aces High in 'Falls town' (I do hate that nickname so)

I am sad, this starts right about now, and I lack a ride. My mother also decided to take the Camera to go take pictures of small children not her own in crapy haloween get ups for a small town Haloween Fair about an hour away and won't be back till Sunday night.

I can honestly say that I am jealous of you. I wanted to go see that P-40 so bad. So very bad. But, looks like I missed out... Hey... only 40 years to the 100th aniversary...

Maybe someone will get a good picture of it. Hint hint. Nudge nudge.

I'd owe ya' big.