NZFF

by **Chairman** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 9:59 pm

I had a sniff at Auckland after shooting the lad's rugby game this morning but they were using runway 05 which isn't the best possible setup for photography from the viewing areas, so I headed further south and ended up at Ardmore.

I have to say, it was dead. In all the time I was there I saw a baron and three cessnas. Sure I saw one of them several times, but ..... I've never shot at Ardmore before and I was expecting Saturday afternoon to be a bit busier, but I found a reasonable place to watch from and managed to catch 80 winks in the car between arrivals ...

so I packed up in disgust and headed back to Puhinui Rd. As per the usual script I arrived in abysmal light, intermittent drizzle, near sunset ... One day I'll get there on a sunny lunchtime and it'll all make sense. Until then, this is about my lot ... But I guess it's like the rugby, the more you do it the better you get at it.

Total respect to Gavin and everyone else who can do this properly, especially in this weather !

Gary

by **Gavin Conroy** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 10:08 pm

Good to see you out trying in average light conditions.
When you do it enough you will see what your camera can and cant do and more importantly work out what F stops and shutter numbers to use.
Then when the sun comes out, everything is a lot easier.

Here is one from Woodbourne last year, really bad weather but it really is the best time to learn.

by **Ian Warren** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 11:16 pm

Shite ! Gav , that Sinaporean C130 is in stark contrast to the glumey weather ... so polished

by **Chairman** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 11:26 pm

It's in stark contrast to everything !!

Gavin's right though - anyone can take good pictures in good light, but if that's what you learn to do then when the weather packs up you're in trouble. It takes a lot of trial and error and practise to take good photos in bad light, but if you learn to do that then then the sun comes out you're laughing.

It worked like that with the speedway, it's working like that with the rugby, why was it such a big revelation to me that it works that way with planes too ???

Duh !

Gary

by **Gavin Conroy** » Sun Aug 16, 2009 8:25 am

The bad days do teach you how to work out how to use exposure settings etc within the camera.
Once you can look at the conditions and know what should work best for your camera then its a great start.

In saying that on a sunny day you have backlite aircraft and then there are learning how to take panning shots but one could go on all day about that.

Take this shot for example.
It was up to me to decide weather we would fly on this day.
I had a very good poilot flying with me so the conditions were no problem but the light was less than ideal.
But when its the only opportunity its a tough decision to say no.

When we took off, this is what it looked like, heavy rain, no sun and it pretty much stayed like that for the whole flight.
Once we were up I thought that we were wasting our time but I had a good amount of time to think about what needed to be done to get an average photo while we joined up.

As we flew on shutter speed and F numbers were changed quite a lot until we got some numbers that I knew suited the camera and came away with the other photo below.
I constantly changed setting throughout the flight to make sure we came away with something.

All of those days of standing in the rain at airports really helped on this day.

I didnt think we would get photos like this and sometimes yellow looks very bad on a dull day.

I guess photoshop could help but its still limited to the original photo you get from the camera.
Mind you when it comes to photoshop, brightness and contrast is all I adjust, dont know how to do much else and dont really want to know.

by **Chairman** » Sun Aug 16, 2009 1:47 pm

I'm with you on photoshop, except that I also use it to crop - most of what I take is pretty unpredictable and jerks around a lot so I tend to shoot quite zoomed out to make sure I actually get it, and worry about composition later.

Well it's horrible weather again and Auckland ATIS reports visibility 2.5km with light showers and clouds from scattered @ 1200 to broken at 1700, but more importantly, runway 23 in use. I guess it's time for today's lesson

Gary

by **Ian Warren** » Sun Aug 16, 2009 1:56 pm

Chairman wrote:
QUOTE (Chairman @ Aug 16 2009, 02:47 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Well it's horrible weather again and Auckland ATIS reports visibility 2.5km with light showers and clouds from scattered @ 1200 to broken at 1700, but more importantly, runway 23 in use. I guess it's time for today's lesson

Planning for the next Avalon Airshow , i'm going to need a new camera , Good luck for results , i'll start taken lessons myself

write down all your secrets and i should be fine

by **ardypilot** » Sun Aug 16, 2009 2:35 pm

Chairman wrote:
QUOTE (Chairman @ Aug 15 2009, 09:59 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I had a sniff at Auckland after shooting the lad's rugby game this morning but they were using runway 05 which isn't the best possible setup for photography from the viewing areas, so I headed further south and ended up at Ardmore.

Always pays to check the METAR's and TAF's before you head out. This site is a good one for NZAA. (And anything published in the VC is a good indication for NZAR)

QUOTE

I have to say, it was dead. In all the time I was there I saw a baron and three cessnas. Sure I saw one of them several times, but ..... I've never shot at Ardmore before and I was expecting Saturday afternoon to be a bit busier, but I found a reasonable place to watch from and managed to catch 80 winks in the car between arrivals ...[/quote]
The circuit height for Ardmore is 1100ft amsl, so whenever the cloud base starts getting close to that, no one's gonna be flying! Love the shot of the coastguard 172 though

Last edited by ardypilot on Sun Aug 16, 2009 2:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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