US Airways PSA & Lens Woes

[Bellucciman]

I was at CCP around 5PM yesterday when the PSA flew in. It was great to watch it land! I took about a dozen images of the landing, but wow I"m having a lot of trouble with my 100-300! Looks like the exposure is off, plus it's really soft. Take a look and let me know what you think. I've had better days!

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i242/Bellucciman/PSA-1.jpg[/img]

I cropped in PS2, then resized to 1024x515. I'm really not happy with the results at all. Any suggestions?

[USAF Pilot 07]

I'm no camera expert or anything, but I think it's safe to say that shooting conditions were not that ideal yesterday, especially with the cloudy background and haze, so that may have played a large part in the quality of photos...

[Bellucciman]

You're right about the weather, it was pretty bad. I tried to compensate with the camera, but it didn't work. Hopefully I'll get better results today. I'm just not happy with the results I'm getting with my equipment.
Thanks for the input, I appreciate it.

[Mellyrose]

Besides the weather playing an obvious role in the darkness and dullness of the photo, that shot doesn't look edited much. What have you done to it, if anything? As far as the softness, it looks like something that can be fixed in Photoshop.

[PhilDernerJr]

I think that considering the poor weather, the shot is pretty good. A little bit of good, standard photo editing should make your shot pretty good! :)

[Bellucciman]

I did some standard editing in PS2. I used one of the sharpening filters and added density as well.

Thanks for the advice, I'll play around a little more and see if I can fix it up a bit more.

I went to the Mets game last night and saw the PSA take off only I had the BBQ fork and not my camera in my hand!

Mike

[Mellyrose]

I was at CCP around 5PM yesterday....
CCP? Where are you talking about?




I cropped in PS2, then resized to 1024x515. I'm really not happy with the results at all. Any suggestions?
Also, you should try cropping to 1024px x 683px. Though it won't fix the other problems, it's pretty standard to do so.



...and added density as well.
What do you mean density? Which tool do you use for this? I'm not familiar with this term, though I'm sure you're referring to something common.

[Bellucciman]

That was my mistake, I meant CPP, College Point. I hit the C twice and didn't see the mistake until after I posted. Have you ever used a tripod there? I've been there a few times and no one has looked at me strange for taking photos of the arriving and departing planes. I wonder if that would change if they saw me with a tripod?
Definately a great spot with the Manhattan background, but with the haze for the past few weeks, wow what a challenge! I bet in the Fall and Winter the background must look great.