Air Corps 90th Anniversary [picture set +200 shots]

lisatiffany

I know there are a a lot of aviation fans on here and normally shooting planes isn't my thing as I'm a professional music and event photographer but recently I was invited out to Casement Aerodrome by the Air Corps to cover the Commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the first state aircraft to land at Casement Aerodrome, June 29th, 2012. I took over 200 pictures and thought I might as well show the highlights of the day. Feel free to post feedback if you want.

Lapin

Some fantastic images there.

Well done and thanks for sharing.

Xpro

Very nice photos

cabla

Great photos... Looked like a fun day!

andy_g

Some great shots there Lisa welcome to the A&A forum.
Andy

bluecode

Excellent photos, extremely good. I wouldn't mind one or two on my wall.

However and I don't want this to sound critical but in the shots of aircraft with engines running. The rotors and propellors invariably look stopped. I don't need to tell you the reason. This has long been a problem for airshow photographers. Of course the solution is to use a slower shutter speed. Inevitably when photographing fast moving aircraft using a slower shutter speed you lose one or two shots even when you get the hang of the panning technique. But the results are much more satisfactory and with taxying aeroplanes and hovering helicopters which are not moving fast. This isn't an issue.

Obviously this is your first time taking pictures of moving aircraft. But if you can get the props and rotors turning in your shots. You'll be up there with the best of them.

lisatiffany

@ bluecode - the problem with the shots is the ISO. I'd been covering a gig the night before and had saved the user settings, when I got to the base it switched from the new user setting to the old one without me noticing. It made the shots so grainy and blown out but I managed to fix a lot of the over exposure. I'd love to re-do the day again and get some movement from the rotor blades and the like. I got confirmation for my media pass for the bray airshow so I'm hoping to get much better pictures.

It's not actually my first time shooting moving aircraft, I did bray last year and the year before, shot a few airports around Ireland and the UK and my ex was a pilot so I got some pretty good access. I'm primarily a gig and event photographer but I'm getting into aviation photography a lot more lately, just been kicking myself about the ISO for the commemoration though I think doing 6 shoots in the space of 3 days didn't help.

bluecode

Well that explains it, makes the results even more admirable. Thought the grainyness was being 'arty'. Look forward to seeing more.

lisatiffany

I wish the grain was being arty, sadly just the ISO going into overdrive. It was actually on 6400 the whole day so I was amazed to see that the images were actually workable in the end. I'd not have gone higher 400 myself, stupid to not have noticed really. Someone else on the day had an issue with an SD card and he lost 2gbs of photos, another person had a lens issue, I think it was just one of those days. I've been looking at some great shots from people on this forum and one user that really stood out was something Lucan, his work on the RIAT is brilliant.

bluecode

Maybe it's a bit of schadenfreude but delighted to see super duper digital had it's own issues. Being an oldie brought up on the old grainy films. 400 was a magical number in my day. Superfast. 6400 was Star Trek stuff in the future. The top of the range was Kodachrome, 64 and 25 and only Kodak could develop it. Oh the horror of getting back your slides from Dun Laoghaire and finding they were all a mess.

I have some picture books which were state of the art of their time. One supposedly inspired Top Gun. Now I look at them and see their grainyness compared to any ordinary digital camera the size of a credit card. I find it hard to believe I was ever impressed by them.

But whatever the ISO, you cannot beat the eye of a talented photographer. You either have it or you don't.

Run_to_da_hills

Its a pity they don't use jets anymore. Three Dehavilland Vampires in formation were a common sight at important state events.