The images have wonderful color. I like #2 the best, with the sky so blue.

I agree on the Corsair, my favorite too. Great mood in the lighting, great composition (nice use of the w/a lens in these, you did a great job..). I can see a couple of these for sale on an easel on a street art exhibit for sure (the brushed metal shot and the Corsair for sure).

Point taken, remember an ultra wide for airshows, got it.

The F-15 is my all time favorite modern fighter, so you get brownie points there too ;).

Thank you for these, excellent job!

Carl

Hi Carl and Royston,

Thanks for the comments. They mean a lot, never thought of selling them Carl, maybe.....

Andrew

heyyy Duxford! Woah look at the F4U. That's a beautiful shot! I love the sky and framing of the plane.

Third is outstanding too!

I love the others the lighting on the first is great. And that stitch is great, @ 20mm too. I've been wanting to try stitching at 50mm and compare the overall look to stitching at wider angles. I need to stop talking about wanting to try it and do it :-D.

If I went to a place like that I'd never leave.

we do have this coming up locally at least

http://www.planesoffame.org/

It looks like from your flickr page that the Corsair is an HDR image? If so do you mind divulging a bit more on how you did that one? I wouldn't have guessed that, it just looks very well exposed. I'd say 99% of the HDRs I've seen have this 'HDR look' but this one doesn't.

Hi Eric,

Yes, the Corsair photo is an HDR image, and no I wouldn't mind telling you how I did it. I must say though I am thrilled that you couldn't tell! I have seen so many that are WAY WAY over the top, and have tried hard to avoid that. In fact, I have only been doing HDR images since Feb this year as I was put off by all the fake looking images.

Anyway, enough prattling, here is how I did the photo.

I took three images of the plane using auto bracketing (I took a couple of test shots to make sure I got either end of the exposure range in the shot) as the lighting was a right pain in the.... . I imported the photos into Photomatix Pro and then juggled the sliders until I got an image with a darkish sky with lots of detail and a nice balance. I find that the more I experiment with HDR the less I am using the 'micro smoothing' control, I find it makes the image too smooth.
I had to juggle the saturation and white and black clip points. Doing this created the above image, and gave a good tonal range. I did find that I struggled to get a spot on exposure with the 5D in these shooting conditions. The lighting was just too contrasty to record it all- I would either get decent sky and a black plane, or, a decent plane and white sky.

I am guessing that the A300 and A350 are better in this respect as with the live view you can juggle the exposure in manual mode to get the best DR possible. Having used them for this site, would you say this is a true enough thing to say (I have only used them briefly at work, not had long enough to use them properly).

Cheers
Andrew

Hi Andrew,

I have seen so many that are WAY WAY over the top, and have tried hard to avoid that. In fact, I have only been doing HDR images since Feb this year as I was put off by all the fake looking images.

I've seen the same and had the same reaction. I'm interested in it as an alternative to possibly getting more DR, but only if I get a legit type of image as an end result, as you did.

Thanks very much for the detail on the technique! I will experiment a bit with that and see what sort of results I might get. Since getting the A700 it actually seems to have cut down a lot on the circumstances where I needed more range, say vs A100, so that at least helps somewhat.

I am guessing that the A300 and A350 are better in this respect as with the live view you can juggle the exposure in manual mode to get the best DR possible. Having used them for this site, would you say this is a true enough thing to say (I have only used them briefly at work, not had long enough to use them properly).

It is definitely handy yes, and I imagine for HDR type shooting it'd probably be even more handy. For normal shooting I'm so used to my own cycle of take shot, check histogram, possibly adjust exposure, repeat (or minor variations thereof), that I'm happy without it still. Carl used them more and might have different ideas about it.

Carl and I might go to an aviation show out here soon, maybe that will be a good chance to experiment.

thanks again for posting those, neat stuff.

"I am guessing that the A300 and A350 are better in this respect as with the live view you can juggle the exposure in manual mode to get the best DR possible. Having used them for this site, would you say this is a true enough thing to say (I have only used them briefly at work, not had long enough to use them properly)."

I think it is a bit easier watching a live histogram yes. In this particular application be hard for me to comment just how useful it would be for you. I don't bracket very much, and I've yet to stack any images in a program.

To me, a swivel (and flush to the body) LCD and a live histogram are awesome tools though. Be neat if those are on the next A700, they ought to be (at least a live histogram dedicated button). But the A700's metering is so good I haven't missed the live histo much at all.

Anyways..

Carl

I love them all . Thumbs up.
Dan

Hi Dan

Thanks for your kind words. Glad you liked the images.

Cheers
Andrew