- 5,062
- Panama City, FL
Borrowed a digital SLR from a friend, a Nikon D70. My first try at a digital SLR rather than a film SLR or a digital point-and-shoot. Headed out to the air show at Tyndall AFB, Panama City, FL early this morning, and had car trouble. Was barely able to limp it home and get back in time for the Blue Angels. I would go back for the Sunday show, but this year (for the first time that I recall) they're not having a Sunday show.
Tyndall's a great location for airshow photography because the afternoon sun is directly behind the crowd.
There was to be a demonstration (not just a fly-by, which I've seen) of the new F-22A, which I missed. &%@@##$ car!!
I have done nothing to these pictures except crop them (except as noted below.) I didn't even resize any of them before or after cropping, so they are as shot when you get them from ImageShack. I set the camera to daylight white balance (not auto - I don't trust auto, especially with nothing but blue sky in most of the frame), set ISO to 400, and used shutter priority mode at 1/500th second. That should have put the computed f-stop in the middle of the lens's range, giving me some leeway. My friend's lens is Nikon's AF-S 55-200 f4-5.6, and frankly it's a piece of crap. Not by design, but it's just busted up: the tube which extends for zoom has a very large amount of play on its axis and gets non-coaxial with the main tube. I discovered this when I took some shots of the neighbor's flower bed the day before the air show, to get the feel of the camera. Couldn't get a shot with the whole frame in focus! I took my AF 70-210 from my 8008, which fits but does not auto-focus on the D70, and used that. I turn off auto-focus for these things anyway - how much fun is it to lose the shot when the lens starts hunting focus?
Another problem with my friend's camera is that it has some spots on the images, with both lenses, so I have to assume it's the sensor. It's a set of about 4 or 5 very faintly darker circles, maybe 40 pixels across. Dust on the sensor, I think. Anyway, I used the clone tool to wipe out the spots, the only actual editing done to these.
Sorry for being thumbnails only, I'm not creative enough to size and place the images for a nice presentation.
Patty Wagstaff flew just before the Blues, and I arrived just as she took off. A couple of shots:
The Blues were next. I saw nothing new about this year's show except they didn't do Fat Albert's JATO takeoff! I hope that's not a permanent omission.
They had the crowd line much farther forward on the flight line than I've seen before, so the taxiway was barely wide enough. The planes in the nearer lane were less than 20 feet away!
Take-off. At Tyndall, I'm usually able to get right up to the fence, as opposed to never even seeing the fence when I go to Pensacola's show in the fall. The buses are distracting in the solo low takeoff, but they definitely show how low he stays before he yanks the stick back at the end of the runway!
Of course the Blue Angels have many signature maneuvers by the 4-ship diamond group, puncuated by a series of opposing solo passes.
You can't have a jet airshow without turnin' and burnin'!
And the sneak passes. I didn't quite get #5 focused, but I nailed #6. This is the very first time I've shot both sneak planes at the same show. I either forget it's coming, so I miss the first one and get the second, or I can't find the second one after the first one goes by. I was also disappointed by the lack of vapor from #5; the humidity was very low for around here, down in the 60% range I think. (We get nosebleeds when it's that low!) Granted, it's a flat pass, but it's over 700 miles per hour, and you usually get a nice cloud around the airplane.
Lastly some 5- and 6-ship formations, followed by some shots of the taxi in.
This last is a plane that departed shortly after the Blues landed, and I don't know what it is. Could I get some help with that? Somebody?
Tyndall's a great location for airshow photography because the afternoon sun is directly behind the crowd.
There was to be a demonstration (not just a fly-by, which I've seen) of the new F-22A, which I missed. &%@@##$ car!!
I have done nothing to these pictures except crop them (except as noted below.) I didn't even resize any of them before or after cropping, so they are as shot when you get them from ImageShack. I set the camera to daylight white balance (not auto - I don't trust auto, especially with nothing but blue sky in most of the frame), set ISO to 400, and used shutter priority mode at 1/500th second. That should have put the computed f-stop in the middle of the lens's range, giving me some leeway. My friend's lens is Nikon's AF-S 55-200 f4-5.6, and frankly it's a piece of crap. Not by design, but it's just busted up: the tube which extends for zoom has a very large amount of play on its axis and gets non-coaxial with the main tube. I discovered this when I took some shots of the neighbor's flower bed the day before the air show, to get the feel of the camera. Couldn't get a shot with the whole frame in focus! I took my AF 70-210 from my 8008, which fits but does not auto-focus on the D70, and used that. I turn off auto-focus for these things anyway - how much fun is it to lose the shot when the lens starts hunting focus?
Another problem with my friend's camera is that it has some spots on the images, with both lenses, so I have to assume it's the sensor. It's a set of about 4 or 5 very faintly darker circles, maybe 40 pixels across. Dust on the sensor, I think. Anyway, I used the clone tool to wipe out the spots, the only actual editing done to these.
Sorry for being thumbnails only, I'm not creative enough to size and place the images for a nice presentation.
Patty Wagstaff flew just before the Blues, and I arrived just as she took off. A couple of shots:
The Blues were next. I saw nothing new about this year's show except they didn't do Fat Albert's JATO takeoff! I hope that's not a permanent omission.
They had the crowd line much farther forward on the flight line than I've seen before, so the taxiway was barely wide enough. The planes in the nearer lane were less than 20 feet away!
Take-off. At Tyndall, I'm usually able to get right up to the fence, as opposed to never even seeing the fence when I go to Pensacola's show in the fall. The buses are distracting in the solo low takeoff, but they definitely show how low he stays before he yanks the stick back at the end of the runway!
Of course the Blue Angels have many signature maneuvers by the 4-ship diamond group, puncuated by a series of opposing solo passes.
You can't have a jet airshow without turnin' and burnin'!
And the sneak passes. I didn't quite get #5 focused, but I nailed #6. This is the very first time I've shot both sneak planes at the same show. I either forget it's coming, so I miss the first one and get the second, or I can't find the second one after the first one goes by. I was also disappointed by the lack of vapor from #5; the humidity was very low for around here, down in the 60% range I think. (We get nosebleeds when it's that low!) Granted, it's a flat pass, but it's over 700 miles per hour, and you usually get a nice cloud around the airplane.
Lastly some 5- and 6-ship formations, followed by some shots of the taxi in.
This last is a plane that departed shortly after the Blues landed, and I don't know what it is. Could I get some help with that? Somebody?
. Sadly, I heard the C-130 pilot talking about the JATO take offs. Seems like it's costing a lot of money for those and they're trying to use the JATO rockets for mission ready aircraft since that is priority. And cost alone is reason enough they're going to quit doing it.
