Anthony’s Favourites 2014:part 1

Probably my favourite picture of the year: two Lancasters, British and Canadian, with their escorts approach Beachy Head at low level

I’m going to divide this year’s favourites into two parts:

1 will be aircraft

2 will be general photography

This year has seen a coincidence of several anniversaries with aviation links, as well as some new or visiting aircraft that I’ve not seen before. 2014 has seen the 100^th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, the 70^th Anniversary of D-Day, as well as the 50^th Anniversary of the Red Arrows. Not only that, but we’ve had a tour from the Canadian Heritage Museum Lancaster (giving us two in the air at once with the BBMF Lanc), as well as other significant aircraft such as a pair of Polish Fitters. There’s been a seeming rush of new replicas around too, such as a Travelair Mystery Ship, a Mew Gull and two BE2c aircraft.

The pictures here are all reasonably large files (1400px or 2000px on their longest side), so worth clicking on to view large.

I’m a big believer that with blog posts, in general, less is more, but, really, I find it hard to edit this selection down much further. So, there’s about 26 pictures – ten or so more than I’d originally meant to assemble. I’ve also not tried to duplicate too many aircraft types, but sometimes it just can't be helped :-)

On with the show!

To start with D Day commemorations at Duxford, end of May.

The D-Day anniversary brought out large numbers of aircraft with connections to the invasion. Multiple Dakotas (C47) appeared at various events, including these on the flight line at Duxford in May. That day, they commemorated the parachute jumps onto the continent, including this demonstration from the Parachute Regiment.  Duxford would be much diminished without Spitfires, so here is MH434 still low after take-off. Finally, the Duxford-based Wildcat made a very welcome return.

The return of Biggin Hill

I was delighted at the return of an air display at Biggin Hill for the first time in a few years. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't great, so I got few pictures that could stand out. But the Typhoon display with plenty of jelly air was great.

RIAT in July: really too many pictures, but what can you do?

 50th Anniversary fly past by the Red Arrows with representatives of 4 other team: the Breitling jets, the Patrouille de France, Patrouille Suisse and Frecce Tricolori.

 Spiral descent: Solo Turk F-16

 Polish Fitters

 Frecce Tricolori singleton

 US Navy FA-18

 Swedish Gripen turning in the rain on the Sunday morning

 Making its on clouds: A400M

 The Italian Airforce Tornado display was one of the best I've ever see from this type

 

I'd not seen the A-11 AMX before: this is an Italian aircraft

 The Textron AirLand E530 Scorpion N531TA was also new to me

 ... as was this P-8 Poseidon

And now - as they say - for something completely different: Headcorn

 I made several trips to Headcorn as usual, to hang out on the fence with Graham, Colin and Len: it is amazing the variety of types that come through. As an example, here is an Auster AOP6 WJ368.

In commemorating the outbreak of the First World War, there had been an attempt to re-create the first flights of the aircraft of the BEF to France. The weather was bad enough that it never happened as planned, but one of the BE2c aircraft made it to Headcorn. This record shot of it is a stitch of 4 overlapping pictures at 200mm f/4 to get a bokeh-pano to isolate the aircraft a little from its background.

Old Warden

 The Mystery ship

 A pair of Mew Gulls

 The DH88 Comet

Chilton DW1: this made a UKAR picture of the week

I made two trips to Old Warden to see displays put on by the Shuttleworth Collection, the second one with Martin. The restored Comet looked amazing!

I've blogged about the Shoreham Airshow previously, so I won't include any of those pictures here, but otherwise the Vulcan and Dragonfly in front of Lancing Chapel would certainly be here.

Finally, a couple of night shots.

I only made it along to one of the Northolt Nightshoots this year: this picture shows the Qinetiq Alpha and a Hawk T2. Best viewed large as it is a stitch of multiple overlapping shots: I'm showing it here at 2000px wide.

 Finally, the Spirit of Kent runs at the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar. UKAR chose a different one from this set as a picture of the week, but I do like this picture. As with the previous, this is a multi-image stitch, so best viewed large (just click on it).

All in all, I've had great fun this year photographing aircraft. About 3 months to go before everything gets going again: can't wait!

Aircraft at night: post-processing

Fig. 1. Armee de l'Air Alpha Jet at RAF Northolt, March 2013

I have previously blogged about taking pictures of aircraft after dark. I went on another night shoot at Northolt last Thursday evening, and thought I would use a picture from that session as a follow-up to my previous blog piece, turning this time to my approach to post-processing.

Parenthetically, I won't put too many pictures from that session here: if you are interested, the set is on Flickr.

The picture at the top of this post (Figure 1) is one that seems to have gone down quite well on Flickr. It shows a French Alpha Jet: notice the pilot's helmet hanging on the side by the cockpit. I'll talk you through my approach to postprocessing this image using Lightroom.

Fig. 2. Original of the image shown in Fig. 1.

Here is the original image, without any alterations (figure 2). It looks pretty ghastly. The night sky looks like West London is some kind of hellish inferno, and the overall contrast is rather low. It was shot with my 18-70 mm lens on the D300, with the zoom was at its longest setting (70 mm). Because I couldn't get any closer, the framing is loose, but it gives me the opportunity to crop to the shape I like, and , in any case, gives a sense that the aircraft can move in the frame. The horizon is – of course! – a little Wonky; however, that's easy enough to correct.

The good thing though is that the exposure on the aircraft itself is pretty much correct. Nevertheless, you'll also notice the nature of the exposure. It looks hugely overexposed, with nearly burnt out foreground, and sky that is way too bright for the night. But the reason is exposed like this is to get light from the shadows under the aircraft.

Fig. 3. The histogram for the original image.

The histogram (Fig. 3) is very ugly, but it shows that I have chosen an exposure that retains data all the way across the brightness range: neither the blacks are blocked up, nor the highlights are badly blown (there is a tiny blip at the very highest exposure data point, but that is from the lights in the background, and there's nothing that can be done about them). So, odd as it may look the exposure was exactly the way I wanted: this is an example of the "expose-to-the-right" method. I might also point out that the exposure was 30 sec: there's really not that much light there, and the picture is way brighter than it looked to the eye.

Evaluating this picture, there are several things that need to be done. First of all, a decision has to be made about the crop: do we give the aircraft space to move, or do we crop in tight? Whatever, the horizon has to be levelled, there's a couple of distracting cars in the background that can go (I make no apology for that: those cars would drive away at some point anyhow). How about the white balance? The lighting is a mixture of sources, so we'll need to think about the overall balance put on the aircraft. And then there's the whole problem of the bright sky and foreground. The sky does not look the way I remember it – the long exposure has brought out all the lights of London glaring on the dusty sky, and at the very least that needs to be corrected. But more than that, the classical way that the eye moves across the picture is that it is drawn from dark to light. So I wanted to keep the aircraft comparatively light while darkening with the sky and the foreground to draw attention to the subject. The image is also quite low contrast, and adding a bit of Clarity should perk it up.

Fig. 4. Import preset applied, and cropped/levelled.

I have a preset that is applied during import into Lightroom: this applies +40 Clarity, +20 Vibrance, as well as some heavily masked capture sharpening, and the Camera Standard version 4 profile. The lens correction profile is also applied by this preset. Figure 4 shows the image after import with this preset applied and cropping plus levelling the horizon. It immediately looks a bit better. That preset is one I regard as my starting point for processing a picture to be modified as required, but in this case I think it works fine and clarity/vibrance don't need further adjustment.

Fig. 5. Sky and foreground darkened

Fig. 6. A little positive exposure painted on to the aircraft.

The next thing is to darken both foreground and the sky. This is done by applying negative exposure adjustments on gradient fills in Lightroom, and also painting in some negative exposure around the undercarriage. I added an additional small darkening vignette. The result is shown in Figure 5.

Having looked overexposed originally, the image now looks more or less fine, but if anything I would like to add some luminosity to the aircraft itself, again to make it pop into the viewers vision. Figure 6 shows the result of applying a positive exposure adjustment with a brush over the aircraft.

At this point, having got the overall look more or less the way I want it, we can look at the white balance. The problem with trying to adjust the white balance earlier is the strong effect of the sky on the image makes it difficult to evaluate what the final look should be. So I left it until this point to fine tune the white balance. The shot was taken on auto white balance and bearing in mind the nature of the mixed lighting it has done a remarkably good job. I've tried adjusting the white balance, but in the end I think I prefer it as shot.

The final step is to clone out the cars and a few tiny distractions in the background.  The picture at the top of page (Figure 1) shows the result.

Although this is a very particular example of my approach, the general philosophy for night shoots applies throughout. 1 – expose to the right. 2 – the eye moves from dark to light, so draw attention to the subject by darkening the area around it. 3 – think about the white balance: even though your camera probably does a very fine job in mixed lighting, it may not give you the results you want, so fine tune it to your taste.

Anthony's 2012 Favourites, Part 2: Aviation

 A bit late I know, but here is the second part of my 2012 favourites.

I've done so much aviation photography in the last year, that it seemed pointless to include my aviation favourites in with all the others. It also means I can be a bit more generous to myself in my selection of pictures.

There's probably too many highlights to list them all, but the big bucket list item was flying with the the HAC Hurricane and Spitfire, which I've blogged about previously. Too many great events to list here. But if you have a look at my Pbase Aircraft galleries, you'll see a selection of pictures from each of the events I've been to this year. (I've kept the complete aircraft galleries going on Pbase, and generally have only posted highlights across on to Flickr. Arbitrary and probably random decision about this - not sure whether I'll keep on doing that. Not to mention there's pictures from a couple of visits to Heacorn Aerodrome I've not even developed yet.)

As before, there's Flash slideshow of the set. If you're on an iPad or similar and Flash is not supported, I suggest going to the original set on Flickr.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

And that's my 2012. Pretty good as far as I am concerned. And I'm hopeful that 2013 will bring some more good opportunities with it.

Happy New Year!

Photographing aircraft at night

Spitfires at the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar

Modern digital SLRs lend themselves to photography not just during the day time: given the astonishing ability of current sensors to convert just a few photons into a good image, the prospect of photographing anything – even flying aircraft  – at night has become a reality. Not only that but the ability to chimp on the back screen to check exposures means that shooting at night has become easier and much less hit and miss. This blog piece is about photographing aircraft in twilight, or after dark, and relates primarily to photographing them static, and with good access to an airfield.

Organisers of aviation-related events are beginning to understand the demand from photographers for pictures that are different from standard air show fare. Once in a while there are opportunities to shoot on an airfield at twilight and after dark, albeit in dim conditions with only the light from hangers to illuminate the aircraft.

As an alternative, if access to an airfield can be arranged, light painting now offers a realistic option of getting views of aircraft that are both dramatic and different from the run of the mill.

At organised nightshoots, the aircraft are usually static with engines switched off. However, sometimes the pilots of propeller aircraft can be persuaded to run their engines, the corresponding slow exposures yield prop circles. Occasionally, it is possible to photograph a helicopter hovering by hangar light.

Over the last two or three years I've done quite a bit of night shooting at airfields. There's a few hints and tips that I've worked out over that time that I thought I should share here. But I'll give the quick summary anyway if you haven't got time to read everything below.

Actually, it's really not very hard. 90% of it can be summed up as follows: shoot Raw, at best quality ISO, use a tripod with good technique, check the exposure both on the histogram and the blinkies. Don't use flash, unless you are light painting a static aircraft: flashes are dangerous on airfields as they can damage night adaptation of flight crew's vision. That is really is most of it.

Having said that, I'll expand a bit more detail.

Including people often adds interest. Note also that the exposure range here is quite large: careful metering is required to keep details in the dark and light areas of the picture. Shooting RAW is a big help in this.

Use RAW

Night shooting is one of those occasions when the real benefits of RAW make themselves felt. With RAW images, it's possible to change the white balance in post-processing with minimal compromise to the quality of the image: this is something that is essential in night shoots where you're likely to be dealing with mixed light sources. Equally, the dynamic range of the subject tends to be huge, from brightly lit up top surfaces to deep shadows under wings: recording images at full 14 stop range gives the best chance of revealing the details of both.

Use a tripod

 Clearly, shooting at night means that generally you have to expect very little light even with hangar lights illuminating the subject. To get the highest quality image, it is best to use base ISO (ISO 200 on my Nikon cameras, ISO 100 on many Canon cameras): shadow areas under wings, for instance, can be very dark indeed, and it is in the shadows that noise lurks; using base ISO is the way to minimise shadow noise. In general, exposures tend to be in the range 2-20 seconds, so a good tripod is essential. (I take the Thom Hogan view of buying a tripod: I am amazed at the number of people who bring spindly cheap things along to night shoots and then put expensive DSLRs and heavy lenses on them). If you get a lot of people in a small area at a night shoot, tripods tend as much trip hazard as camera support, but they are essential anyway. And don’t forget to use a remote/cable release for the shutter, and mirror lock up or delay to minimize camera vibrations.

Errr ... not actually a nightshot, but in the evening beforehand. High viz vests and trip hazards abound on this airfield.

... Or don't use a tripod

Having said that, it is now becoming possible to use a camera without a tripod. Some of the Sony DSLRs have a multiple exposure noise reduction mode, where multiple pictures are taken at very high ISO and then averaged to minimise the noise and increase definition. One photographer at a recent shoot standing next to me did everything by hand with his Sony: the camera gave rapid whizz-whizz-whizz sound as it took multiple images. It seemed to work extremely well, judging by pictures he posted afterwards.

Handheld at f/1.4

And there is one other choice too: a fast lens and high ISO. If you are lucky enough to get something like a helicopter hovering by hangar light, the only way to photograph it in flight is to use a reasonably fast shutter speed. At a recent night shoot, I took along my 50 mm f/1.4 lens: I set the D700 to ISO 3200, the aperture wide open, the camera to aperture priority exposure and crossed my fingers. This gave me exposures around 1/40th second which was just about OK for getting hovering helicopters.

Having said that, I still wouldn't recommend anything other than using a tripod to both support the camera and help you with control and composition.

Metering and exposure

It is very easy to lose shadow detail: this Lynx was given +0.67 stops exposure compensation to prevent this

Metering at night can be quite difficult. Ideally, it's good to "expose to the right", i.e. get as much light into the exposure as possible without blowing the highlights. But aircraft often have specular reflections from artificial lights, so these can confuse the evaluation of exposure.

Usually an aircraft is illuminated by something like hangar lights which give a bright foreground, but then the light fades off quickly so that the sky, and any background is dark. Aircraft themselves may be painted anything between white and black, so it's very difficult to establish a general rule for how to choose and exposure.

My general approach is to begin with standard matrix metering and aperture priority exposure mode. I'll start with a preliminary exposure without any compensation, and then look at the histogram and any blinking highlights in the display on the back of the camera. From there, I'll dial in exposure compensation to increase the exposure until the highlight warning starts to blink.  There's often very bright reflections on small parts of the aircraft where any illumination reflects directly at the camera. Usually, it's impossible to do anything about these, so normally I'll accept small areas of blinking highlights on the camera's display, in order to get sufficient exposure that detail is nicely revealed in shadow areas.

Typically, I'll end up with +1-+2 stop exposure compensation.

I normally work in aperture priority mode to ensure that I get the depth of field I want across the subject. Once the exposure was worked out in aperture priority, it can sometimes be useful to go into manual mode and lock in that exposure: artificial lights shouldn't change, so the exposure doesn't need to change.

The Martin-Baker Meteor. How would you meter for this?

For really difficult subjects, like a black-painted aircraft (like the Martin-Baker Meteor), you could spot meter and set the upper fuselage in, say, Zone II: let me know how it goes if you ever try it!

White balance

In general terms, it should be possible to set a fixed white balance to go with the colour temperature of the lights illuminating the subjects. On my first night shoot, I thought I would bring along a grey card and use that to establish a white balance, which could then subsequently be applied to all the pictures. In practice, it has never worked out like that. The lighting always tends to be rather mixed. At some places, the hangar light is pretty close to daylight balanced; but in the background that maybe sodium lamps. This can give rather horrid effects that vary from place to place on an airfield.

It is much simpler to set an auto white balance the camera. Auto white balance these days does amazingly well, and I find it simpler to tweak the white balance in post processing than worry about trying to set an exact white balance at the time.

Choosing shutter speed and aperture

f/11 gave enough depth of field for this Tornado, and it didn't wander off during the 15 sec exposure :-)

 Aircraft have depth to them, and if you're reasonably close to them only to consider and aperture the get some sharp all the way across if that's what you want. Often, it's convenient to work at about f/11, because typically that gives sufficient depth of field, without much in the way of diffraction effects reducing resolution. However, that aperture is a real restriction on the amount of light getting in and even with good lighting, at ISO 100 or 200 and exposure time will be several seconds.

Long exposures are normally not a problem at night shoots. Static aircraft don't get fidgety, so it really doesn't matter how long the exposure is. Not only that, but when aircraft are running their engines, the propellers make attractive circles with long exposures.

The limitation of long exposures is when people are in the image or an aircraft is actually flying. People are really difficult, because a pilot checking out an aircraft, for instance, will never stand still. If you want to freeze the human, there's no option but to open the aperture and increase the ISO.

If you're lucky, 1/10th second exposure can be OK. AgustaWestland AW-109E.

Hovering helicopters also offer a challenge. As long as they are not moving very quickly, exposures around 1/40 are about right and that can be got on most recent cameras simply by turning up the ISO and using the fastest lens you have got.

Framing and composition

This is a matter of personal taste, so I won't comment on this much. However, don't be afraid to include sky in a picture, because that's where aircraft are really meant to be. Even when they're static, it is good to give the impression that they can move forward by leaving space in the picture where they can move into. (It is probably different if you are going to submit your picture to one of the aircraft databases because they like everything cropped very tight; however for most other purposes it's good to give the aircraft room to move).

Night skies, certainly here in the South of England, are rarely completely dark. There's usually a deep orangey-brown glow from reflected street lights in the distance. Not only that, but very often night shoots will actually begin in late evening when there is still light in the sky.

Graduated Neutral density filters for evening shoots

The Kent Spitfire, TA805, in a pool of hangar light as evening falls. the sky was brought out with a 2 stop ND grad. This picture was a UKAR Picture of the Week.

 Evening shoots in particular benefit from bringing out the details of the sky. Aircraft tend to be much darker than the sky, so it's useful to bring the sky down by using a graduated neutral density filter. I often use a 2-3 stop Lee hard grad for this. Shooting Raw means that you have a chance of doing this in post anyhow, but I find that adding an ND grad makes this much easier, with much less fiddling needed in post, and a better range of tones available anyhow.

Things to look for

Flames from a Merlin engine

 Engines, especially on vintage aircraft, often emit blue flames from the exhausts which become visible after dark when they're running. This gives a real sense of drama to the image. Unfortunately, they don't emit these very consistently, say have to be prepared to take multiple exposures, each of which will be several seconds, to ensure getting the blue flames.

Checking over his Alpha: a French pilot inspects his cockpit

Watch out for the activity of aircrews. They will often go out of a plane, check it over, and carry out other activities before getting in. It is often quite possible to capture the activity of crew members in this way, and this gives a bit of extra life to the image.

Typhoon on tow

The same applies to the activity of ground crews. Be prepared for aircraft be towed in and out of hangers: this often provides good opportunities for capturing the life of the airfield. (It scarcely needs saying, but be prepared to get out of the way when an aircraft is towed – don’t wait to be asked – or run over).

When it is raining (or if some water has very kindly been poured onto the ground ☺) It's possible to capture very nice reflections. Watch out reflections, and consider including them in your image.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are always a bit of a problem with night shoots. Very often there are ugly sodium, fluorescent or tungsten lamps that shine brightly across the other side of the airfield. This can be very distracting from the subject. The only thing to do is to watch out for them, both when composing the image initially, and when chimping. You can sometimes move position, or choose a higher or lower angle to conceal the worst behind the subject. It rarely helps to open the aperture wide. Even at f/1.4, given the distance between the subject and the camera, the depth of field is great enough that distant lights still form relatively compact spots rather than disappearing in elegant blur.

Focus-stacked bokehrama of a Typhoon: not a night shot, but in the evening, anyhow :-). 105mm at  f/2.  
5 portrait format images in a row, blended into a pano, and then further rows used in focus stacking to get the intended depth of field across the aircraft. But at the distance used, even at f/2 the background is not very suppressed.

At evening time while there is still light, it is quite tempting to try and blur out background buildings by constructing a bokeh panorama. For instance, I have tried using a 105 mm f/2 lens wide open to take a series of overlapping shots of a Typhoon fairly close up, and then stitch them into a panorama. I had hoped that the restricted depth of field with this lens would blur out the building behind. This method is met with limited success (see picture above). Not only that, but I ended up having to effectively focus stack the images because the nearest wing was not the same focal plane as the fuselage. The result was a perfectly satisfactory record of the aircraft, but scarcely worth the effort.

Making use of high and low angles

Securite Civile, Grumman S-2A/Conair Turbo Firecat. Air stairs allowed a higher viewpoint.

And from a low angle - an HS125. The low angle helps bring out the reflection.

Where possible, try and get above or below the aircraft (okay -- statement of the bleedin' obvious). If you are lucky, something like air stairs will be produced. Make sure you make use of them, and don't be afraid to take your tripod up.

Equally, try getting down as low as your tripod will let you, or even balancing your camera on the ground and propping the lens at a suitable angle with a bean bag or anything you can lay your hands on. This works particularly well with reflections of wet ground.

Details

A Polish Bryza runs its engines

It's usually worth taking a long a telephoto zoom. Even if you're quite close to the aircraft, a zoom will allow you to get details such as the pilots in situ. You are not always obliged to photograph the full, or even nearly full, subject.

Post processing

There's nothing special about processing night shots, so stick with your usual routine. One thing to bear in mind is that the light from, say, a lamp on a hangar high above your head and behind you will fade off into the distance. This means that the aircraft may well be darker than the foreground. It is often useful to put a gradient of negative exposure on the foreground. (Of course, you could do this in camera by putting an inverted ND grad over the foreground, but I somehow never think of this at the time).

Equally as a way of drawing the viewer's attention to the subject, adding a vignette to the image works well. I often find myself using a stronger vignette with night shots that I do in the daytime.

And that's about it...

Night shooting aircraft is huge fun, and I strongly recommend it to anybody who has any interest in aviation photography.