Joe
Well-Known Member
Well, I've finally done it. I took the plunge and entered the exciting world of DSLR photography. After using ultra-zoom point-and-shoot digital cameras for the past five years (a 6 MP Canon PowerShot S3 IS for the past 2½ years and a 3 MP Olympus C-740 UltraZoom before that), I decided that I could accomplish a lot more with an SLR. I'd been drooling over the 12 MP Nikon D5000 for several months and finally couldn't take it anymore, so last week I ordered it from Amazon.com along with two Nikon lenses; the AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-55mm ƒ/3.5-5.6G VR standard zoom "kit" lens and a 55-200mm ƒ/4-5.6G VR high power zoom lens. It also came with two "Nikon School" DVDs that I have yet to watch. I also ordered a SanDisk 8GB Extreme III Class 10 memory card, a Nikon MC-DC2 remote cord (to help with the night shots on a tripod), and a CaseLogic SLRC-202 medium camera bag, which has a unique "hammock" system that holds the camera in place facing down.
Anyway, having had it for not even a week, and with work being slow this time of year (not to mention the weather being awful around here lately), all I have are a few test shots, but so far I'm very happy with it:
RI Army National Guard Beechcraft C-12 Huron (military variant of the King Air 200). I can actually get prop blur (and hopefully, after practice, panning motion blur) during the day now! My old camera had a minimum aperture of ƒ/8, which limited how slow I could go in daylight, leaving me with turning props frozen in time.
Mexican-registered Cessna Citation III. It's been put to bed for the night but I still wanted to experiment with settings at night. I'm loving the lack of noise!
This is an 800 × 600 crop of an original size photo of a passenger's BMW Z8. I'm very impressed by the sharpness and lack of noise at full-size; I'm used to noise at 100%.
Anyway, I still have a lot to learn, and I still have a few expensive items on my wish list: a Sigma 10-20mm ƒ/4-5.6 EX DC HSM wide angle zoom lens (for the CK style cockpit shots
)and a Nikon SB-600 Speedlight external flash. But, I think I'm off to a good start. I do, however, have quite a few photos from the past six months (as well as some older ones I revisited and uploaded for the first time), so here goes:
This amphibious Cessna U206G Stationair flies for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to conduct waterfowl population surveys. The crew is wearing jumpsuits the same color as the plane, and you can see the copilot checking out this F/A-18 firing up to his right. This is one example of a spinning prop that appears stationary.
A Canadian-registered Dassault Falcon 10.
A Rockwell 695 Jetprop 980. These things are ridiculously loud... The Garrett AiResearch TPE331 turboprop engine is not good for your ears, especially when there are two of them. This is was the best I could do with prop blur during the day with my old camera; any slower and it was overexposed.
A Flexjet Learjet 60 waiting for its passengers. I'd love to get a night photo of a Learjet with its engines running (i.e., beacons on), but it's hard to pull a GPU, marshal, and take pictures all at the same time.
Another night shot of a Learjet (this time a 35A) where I wasn't able to get back to the camera in time after pulling their GPU. Next time I'll have to try setting the intervalometer. I think Jeff Foxworthy came in on this one, too.
This Coast Guard Lockheed HC-130H Hercules took about 4,000 gallons of Jet-A every day for over a week, which not only helped us beat our record for one month (we pumped almost 100,000 gallons in July), but allowed us to start off the fiscal year with black ink instead of red as well. Fueling it involved emptying one truck (complete with jumping up and down on the side to get every last drop out) and having another on standby.
I have so many pictures where I wish I had my current camera instead, but this one ranks near the top. If I had zoomed out just a little, this would have been awesome.
A Mitsubishi MU-2B-26 getting ready to go after dark. I like the color of the city lights being reflected off the overcast layer in the background.
A North American Sabreliner 75A. I've always wanted to see one of these; I'm not sure how many are still flying. This one was built in 1974 and looks great for its age. I'm still waiting on a JetStar... [fingers crossed]
I had procrastinated in towing this Cirrus SR22 G3 GTSX Turbo into the hangar since the afternoon, even though it was parked right in front. We didn't have a universal tow bar at the time though, and this thing was very hard to move by hand. Anyway, a coworker, who happened to have gone to photography school back in the early 90s, suggested the lighting, curves, and metallic flakes in the paint would make for a great shot. So, I grabbed my tripod and messed around for a bit, and he was right! This one is one of my favorites. I overexposed it just slightly to make the plane brighter and increase the contrast with the background.
This Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet came in for fuel. It flies with VFA-122 (the "Flying Eagles") at NLC.
"Falcon calling Landmark, I'm sorry, how many does it take to tango?"
We somehow managed to squeeze in a Gulfstream V, a Dassault Falcon 900, a Learjet 31A, and a Cessna 421C Golden Eagle... at 3:30 AM... I wish I had a DSLR with a wide angle lens for these hangar shots.
An Eclipse 500 getting ready to go. This would have been better if the pilots turned the beacon on before starting. The streak of light at the top is a departure out of PVD. This reminds me, I have a quick question for the pros: What affects the size of the "star effect" on bright lights in night photography? Is it aperture size? Shutter speed? A combination of the two? Or something else?
A British Aerospace HS.125-700A getting ready to fly someplace much warmer.
This Fairchild-Dornier 328JET arrived a little after 2 AM on a ferry flight to pick up a college basketball team the following night. This was my first time seeing one of these; hopefully we'll be seeing more of them in the future.
This aircraft used to fly for Atlantic Coast Airlines for Delta Connection under the same registration. These things seem to have found new life as corporate shuttles/executive jets.
The 328JET's 11-foot high wings made packing the hangar pretty easy.
A Dassault Falcon 50.
A Gulfstream IV. I liked the way this one came out and yet it was still rejected by JetPhotos.net. I've had worse accepted...
Anyway, that's it for now... I'm looking forward to adding more with the new camera, but being almost done with my CFI, I don't know how much longer I'll be working at OQU, so there very well may be pictures from a different ramp instead...
Anyway, having had it for not even a week, and with work being slow this time of year (not to mention the weather being awful around here lately), all I have are a few test shots, but so far I'm very happy with it:
RI Army National Guard Beechcraft C-12 Huron (military variant of the King Air 200). I can actually get prop blur (and hopefully, after practice, panning motion blur) during the day now! My old camera had a minimum aperture of ƒ/8, which limited how slow I could go in daylight, leaving me with turning props frozen in time.
Mexican-registered Cessna Citation III. It's been put to bed for the night but I still wanted to experiment with settings at night. I'm loving the lack of noise!
This is an 800 × 600 crop of an original size photo of a passenger's BMW Z8. I'm very impressed by the sharpness and lack of noise at full-size; I'm used to noise at 100%.
Anyway, I still have a lot to learn, and I still have a few expensive items on my wish list: a Sigma 10-20mm ƒ/4-5.6 EX DC HSM wide angle zoom lens (for the CK style cockpit shots
)and a Nikon SB-600 Speedlight external flash. But, I think I'm off to a good start. I do, however, have quite a few photos from the past six months (as well as some older ones I revisited and uploaded for the first time), so here goes:This amphibious Cessna U206G Stationair flies for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to conduct waterfowl population surveys. The crew is wearing jumpsuits the same color as the plane, and you can see the copilot checking out this F/A-18 firing up to his right. This is one example of a spinning prop that appears stationary.
A Canadian-registered Dassault Falcon 10.
A Rockwell 695 Jetprop 980. These things are ridiculously loud... The Garrett AiResearch TPE331 turboprop engine is not good for your ears, especially when there are two of them. This is was the best I could do with prop blur during the day with my old camera; any slower and it was overexposed.
A Flexjet Learjet 60 waiting for its passengers. I'd love to get a night photo of a Learjet with its engines running (i.e., beacons on), but it's hard to pull a GPU, marshal, and take pictures all at the same time.
Another night shot of a Learjet (this time a 35A) where I wasn't able to get back to the camera in time after pulling their GPU. Next time I'll have to try setting the intervalometer. I think Jeff Foxworthy came in on this one, too.
This Coast Guard Lockheed HC-130H Hercules took about 4,000 gallons of Jet-A every day for over a week, which not only helped us beat our record for one month (we pumped almost 100,000 gallons in July), but allowed us to start off the fiscal year with black ink instead of red as well. Fueling it involved emptying one truck (complete with jumping up and down on the side to get every last drop out) and having another on standby.
I have so many pictures where I wish I had my current camera instead, but this one ranks near the top. If I had zoomed out just a little, this would have been awesome.
A Mitsubishi MU-2B-26 getting ready to go after dark. I like the color of the city lights being reflected off the overcast layer in the background.
A North American Sabreliner 75A. I've always wanted to see one of these; I'm not sure how many are still flying. This one was built in 1974 and looks great for its age. I'm still waiting on a JetStar... [fingers crossed]
I had procrastinated in towing this Cirrus SR22 G3 GTSX Turbo into the hangar since the afternoon, even though it was parked right in front. We didn't have a universal tow bar at the time though, and this thing was very hard to move by hand. Anyway, a coworker, who happened to have gone to photography school back in the early 90s, suggested the lighting, curves, and metallic flakes in the paint would make for a great shot. So, I grabbed my tripod and messed around for a bit, and he was right! This one is one of my favorites. I overexposed it just slightly to make the plane brighter and increase the contrast with the background.
This Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet came in for fuel. It flies with VFA-122 (the "Flying Eagles") at NLC.
"Falcon calling Landmark, I'm sorry, how many does it take to tango?"
We somehow managed to squeeze in a Gulfstream V, a Dassault Falcon 900, a Learjet 31A, and a Cessna 421C Golden Eagle... at 3:30 AM... I wish I had a DSLR with a wide angle lens for these hangar shots.
An Eclipse 500 getting ready to go. This would have been better if the pilots turned the beacon on before starting. The streak of light at the top is a departure out of PVD. This reminds me, I have a quick question for the pros: What affects the size of the "star effect" on bright lights in night photography? Is it aperture size? Shutter speed? A combination of the two? Or something else?
A British Aerospace HS.125-700A getting ready to fly someplace much warmer.
This Fairchild-Dornier 328JET arrived a little after 2 AM on a ferry flight to pick up a college basketball team the following night. This was my first time seeing one of these; hopefully we'll be seeing more of them in the future.
This aircraft used to fly for Atlantic Coast Airlines for Delta Connection under the same registration. These things seem to have found new life as corporate shuttles/executive jets.
The 328JET's 11-foot high wings made packing the hangar pretty easy.
A Dassault Falcon 50.
A Gulfstream IV. I liked the way this one came out and yet it was still rejected by JetPhotos.net. I've had worse accepted...
Anyway, that's it for now... I'm looking forward to adding more with the new camera, but being almost done with my CFI, I don't know how much longer I'll be working at OQU, so there very well may be pictures from a different ramp instead...
