BWI-DCA

[steve1840]

I finally got around to cleaning up my photos from when I drove down to DC to meet my girlfriend at Reagan National back in November. I stopped along the way at BWI to do my first real spotting from their "official spotting park", and then stopped at Gravely Point Park for the shots from DCA.

I would like to re-emphasize that this was my first real spotting excursion. I may have gone a little overboard with photoshop on a few of the pics though. Comments are more than welcome.

BWI

http://i54.tinypic.com/jr5rb6.jpg

http://i51.tinypic.com/fm53tl.jpg

http://i51.tinypic.com/2mchjf7.jpg

http://i56.tinypic.com/5zjguw.jpg

http://i52.tinypic.com/riywi8.jpg

http://i51.tinypic.com/24ca4pf.jpg

http://i55.tinypic.com/29cq780.jpg

http://i52.tinypic.com/mszwg4.jpg

http://i51.tinypic.com/16m1zr6.jpg

DCA

http://i55.tinypic.com/nqaiwk.jpg

http://i51.tinypic.com/v4ce1k.jpg

http://i51.tinypic.com/2qt90ys.jpg

http://i52.tinypic.com/t5nhqp.jpg


Like I said, they are not the greatest and I was trying to get my speeds and exposures right along with my timing. Hope you enjoyed.

[ANITIX87]

Way too much shadow/highlight tool. It's creating halos around the aircraft. If your exposure and white balance are right, you should need VERY little (if any at all) of this tool. Some of the images are fantastic from the point of view of what's in the image and the angles you were able to get but, as you said, improving your exposure while shooting will help limit how much post-processing you need.

This looks like a good start to your spotting career! What equipment are you using?

TIS

[steve1840]

Thanks for the comment. I definitely agree that I used too much shadow/highlight tool. The images were way too dark before the post processing. I have been getting more and more used to my new equipment and have definitely been correcting the problem. The only thing that has been hindering me lately has just been bad light.

I'm using a 5D Mark II and had the 100-400L on it that day.

I had never photographed aircraft before so that day I kinda just took it out and set a fast shutter speed and started ripping of shots. Now I have learned that I get much better shots if I do a little metering for my exposure to set my shutter speed and apeture. My pics have definitely gotten alot better since I've started shooting in full manual.

[Zee71]

Steve,

Good stuff.....and I agree on the over use of the shadow/highlight tool. In addition you want to look for any dust stops on your images and clean the up. The first image which has a dust spot in the right upper third of the image....might want to clean that up. The best way I found looking for dust spots in Photoshop is to use the Ctrl+I (this will invert your image)......zoom in as needed to see where the dust spots are and any hot pixels as well. Then Ctrl+I again, locate those spots and the use the clone tool to fix the issues.

[steve1840]

Thanks Mark. Good info, and I will look for that kind of stuff from now on. I am still a rather new user to Photoshop and still trying to get a good handle on using it to edit photos.

[Zee71]

Steve...........look at some of these links. You may find them helpful in your workflow for editing images. In additon, one of the most important things to do before working on your images is to make sure your display is calibrated. I use a "Spyder 3 Elite", I believe there is a newer version of the tool, as well as other display calibrations tools out there.

http://www.seahawkgfx.de/Editingguide.pdf (this is one of my favorite)
http://www.airliners.net/faq/editing_guide.php (another favorite)
http://www.jid.me.uk/workflow/index.html
http://www.seahawk.gmxhome.de/contrastreject.pdf

[steve1840]

Mark, when you say make sure that my display is calibrated, are you talking about the screen on my computer? I didn't realize that they could become not calibrated. That is definitely something I never even considered. I will have to look for that tool. Thanks again.

Also, I checked out those links, and I have printed out a copy of seahawkgfx editing guide. THat shall be my bible to get started on a good workflow practice.

[Zee71]

Yes.....when I talk about calibrating your display, I am referring to your computer monitor. How do you know if your greens aren't too green and your reds not red enough. It may look good to you, but there is a standard or baseline to work from. When I calibrated my monitor it turned out that my images were much warmer then they should have been. I didn't know about calibrating until I was reading some books of photography workflows.

[steve1840]

That is some very good insight. I never would have thought about it if you hadn't recommended it. Thanks.

[gonzalu]

Steve, Calibration can be done strictly with software and your eyes or Hardware Calibration which uses a hardware device called a densitometer or a colorimeter to literally measure color and brightness at the screen. There are many choices out there and you should read up on them before deciding ... stay away from cheap models which may actually make things worse. Best bet is to at least start with visual Gamma correction of your display... that alone will help a lot ;-) What looks too dark on your screen may be too bright on others so at least when you do basic gamma correction visually, you have a good starting point.

I currently use the ColorMunki Photo and have owned and used and liked ColorVision Spyder2 and i1Display 2

As for your dark images and use of the highlight / shadow tool, I suggest you try this first.

--Try to get the exposure right first... NOT IN CAMERA, that is obvious, but in post. Use the EXPOSURE controls in Photoshop first before using any other tricks
--REDUCE contrast ... this helps bring out detail in shadow areas without the trickery of the highlight/shadow tool. Perceptually they may look similar but mathematically they are very different.
--REDUCE or INCREASE brightness
--Finally when you MUST use the Highlight/Shadow tool... use SMALL SMALL SMALL numbers :-) I mean highlights slider should never be past 7. 4 to 6 works very well without revealing itself too much.

Curves can be a powerful tool once you master it. I say PRACTICE and collaborate. Post poor pictures in the forum and ask us to help and we will gladly work on them and show how we all went about getting to a better result. This way you and we all learn...

Finally: EDITING. You must become a ruthless editor yourself. IT HURTS but I have deleted ENTIRE shoots from JFK which is painful. I mean over 500 pictures, in the trash, even if it included a good catch. I will keep shots with fences in the way, cut off noses etc. BUT NEVER a badly exposed or dirty or out of focus etc. shot. Well, that's a lie, REALLY RARE ones I will keep a shot or two of, but never show them ROTFL

[steve1840]

Thanks Manny. Hopefully my next spotting adventure will be next Saturday at JFK, so I hopefully I will be able to see if I have figured out some good settings for my camera that day. I will be sure to post any slightly off shots for you guys to help me with if I am not able to get them touched up myself.

Having said that......dear spotting gods, please let the wearther and light cooperate next saturday!

[gonzalu]

Steve, in my experience, usually the day you are the least likely to be able to make it out to the airport is the day with the best weather! That being said, I am on your side! ;-)

[steve1840]

Yeah, I know what you mean. Unfortunately, I don't have the pleasure of being all that close to the city where I can just look out my window and say "yep, I'm going out to JFK today". I really wish that it wasn't a 2-3 hour drive for me, or I would be down there all the time. And I really wish I didn't have to leave here so early to be able to get down there for 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning. The way I see it, if my trips to JFK are going to be once in a while, I am going to spend my entire sunlit day there and make my rounds to the different spots.

So, having said that, I'll just keep looking at the weather reports and see what the plans shall be. And ultimately wait til Friday night to make my decision. Party sunny/cloudy or better and I'm there! Not that I couldn't enjoy a day of spotting with cloudy or overcast skies, but I don't think I could justify driving 2-3 hours to have bad light. If I lived a lot closer it would be a different story.

[gonzalu]

Wow, that's like me and my Sister's up in Albany. When Obama was due in last week, I was there on Thursday... but a 3 hr drive is not my idea of quick spotting ;-)

Are Boston or Bradley any closer to you?

[steve1840]

Providence is about 30-40 mins and Bradley is a little over an hour from me. I would go there often but the traffic isn't all that great. Mostly Southwest and american 737s at Bradley and Mainly Southwest 737s and USAirways E190s and RJs at PVD. On one occasion I headed up to PVD after work back in Oct but haven't gone since. Boston is about 1.5-2.5 hrs depending on traffic. I plan on tryign to make it up to Boston sometime in MArch when the weather warms up a little. I think I can handle JFK in this cold, but I thik the winds will be a little worse up at Boston.