Documenting Southwick Part 4

Of course, the whole point is the flying.

Here are a series of shots taken with my camera at 1024 X 768. Next time I try to capture aircraft in flight, I will turn up the resolution to 1280 X 960 for the flight photos, knowing I only want to end up with 500 in the center of the photo that will get posted.

For this shoot, I positioned myself across the circle from the judges, and then moved offline a bit so I could get the judges and the contestant close together.

We begin by setting the stage:

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The subject of our flight photo test is the Quantum, seen here on the flight line between flights.

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Here is the Quantum sitting in the circle, lines out, ready for the flight. A low shot with all the field and background cropped out showcases the airplane ready to go.

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Here is a shot that starts the flight. We have the holder ready to launch, the judges in the background and the pilot, signaling for release. You have to anticipate the moment and click the shutter on the digital camera I have a moment before you want to take the picture, so I did not get the actual image I was after, the same shot with the airplane just moving out after having been released. But this tells the story.

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Normally, I would crop this a little tighter, eliminating the ground. But in this case, I thought the shadow of the airplane helped provide a sense of the scene.

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This is a 'happy accident' and shows what you can do if you shoot with enough resolution and crop out the stuff that is not in the picture. If you look closely you will see the airplane dead level and going straight away from us framed momentarily by the blue sun tent.

This image only came out after looking at the original picture for a while, but it's clearer when we zoom in.

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Here is a good example of cropping out the unneeded info. The original of this shot took in the whole circle, but in the version I'm posting, we see the airplane, level inverted, the pilot and the judges. If I'd have taken this at higher resolution, it would show a little better. As it is, there might be a bit more grass than we need.

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If you pan the camera with the ship as it goes by, you can do things like this. I caught the airplane between the judges and the pilot, just past dead on to my point of view.

After selecting the portion of the image to share with Forum friends, I had to scale the remannt UP in size to the 500 pixel width. That, plus doing the unsharp mask before the scale up instead of after, left some artifacts in the image.

But you get the idea...

On to VSC!

The Cyberflyer

Good job Cyberflyer.
I for one will be waiting for your report from VSC.
SteveD.