I know it seems like I have it made, but really the pressure of doing something you love day after day, working with great people, flying in and with incredible aircraft, and having people pay you to do it, it's just not all it's cracked up to be...................................................................................................................... April Fools!
I love it and I pinch myself about four times a day!!
Hey Jim aren't there two women now with the thunderbirds? I was trying to look it up on their site but having trouble accessing it at work. I didn't think enough was made of the first woman last season so it is great there are 2 now.
Yes there are, the new one I IIRC is Samantha Weeks. The other of course is Nicole Malachowski. markperez wrote:
Hey Jim aren't there two women now with the thunderbirds? I was trying to look it up on their site but having trouble accessing it at work. I didn't think enough was made of the first woman last season so it is great there are 2 now.
They are fun! The rotors on this big baby move so slowly that you really have to drop the shutter speed to get decent motion. This was an incredible machine. My buddy Bryan in the tower orchestrated this particular photo op, he's the man!
I spent some time working on the images that disappeared a month or so ago. Looks like our thread is back to normal now. I don't think Fred could get the images back so I went through my notes and determined what went where.
I'm still going through our thread, it seems another section has lost images. The image number is still there if I clock on edit, but there is no image, ugh! I don't know if I can recreate all of it, but I'm working on it.
You're right, the F16 is hard to beat! I've got several upcoming engagements with f22 and f35 aircraft and while I'm looking forward to it, they look a little too Star Wars-ish. I guess we'll get used to them. If you talk with the guys who fly them, they are weapons beyond compare. One pilot described his day in the 22 as launch, lock on, kill, lock on kill, hit the tanker, lock on, kill, ditto, hit the tanker, go home.
If you're new to our thread, we had some images mysterioulsy disappear and I'm trying to figure out what went where and rebuild it. Hope you enjoy the shots and discussion!
Here's a technique that's tough to perfect, but it even makes a Cub look fast. This is hot off the press from an assignment last week. Not a click of retouch on this either.
Jim, if I had enough time I could spot-meter my way into the right exposure for many of these shots. But how do you set the exposure when you know you're going to have fractions of a second to get the right shot? How much of it is instinct, talent, and long experience; how much of it is learnable technique (and what techniques?); and what do you ask your camera to do in order to help you capture the right exposure more easily? Shutter-priority mode? Aperture-priority? Manual? Exposure bias?
I hope the meaning of that question makes some sense...
The Cub at cruise requires 1/80th or slower for a full disk, actually about the same as a big warbird prop loafing in formation with a Saratoga or an A-36. The air was still a bit cobblestone on this shoot, but was beginning to calm at this sequence. I've got a number of images in the sequence that are good and sharp and a handful that, well, take on a Monet-ish look. My personal record to date is 1/40th with the Mooney Acclaim a few months ago. If it wasn't for the exif record, I wouldn't believe that one myself!
Much of what you see is instinctual, borne on 27 years of assignments. I can feel when I'm in sync with the subject aircraft and then I shoot like crazy. The Cub shot was successful due to the callaborative efforts of my pilot, the subject aircraft's pilot, and what measure of skill I could muster at the moment. The wingtip strobe firing was something that I hoped for but only happened in one of 40 frames, so I guess Ansel was right, "f/8 and be there!" As far as exposure, My 1Ds MKII is incredibly accurate in matrix, much more so than any of my Canon film bodies were. The conditions change so drastically from moment to moment in air to air sequences, you would get about 1/10th of the shots if you were spot metering. I'm either on matrix or manual. It's amazing, but I can retrieve the appropriate exposure settings from memory for just about every condition as we're going around and around. Especially amazing because I can't tell you what I did yesterday!
Focus is another matter. Depending upon light, I vascillate between auto and manual. I want to be able to pick where my plane of sharpness lies and even though the Canon lenses allow you to over-ride the autofocus, I don't trust that at just the precise moment of capture it's where I want it to be. I'd say manual is my preferred mode of focus.
Once again, the camera settings are obviously important, but the whole team being in sync is just as important. When we launched we had close to a 25 knot wind blowing us around. With the accompanying turbulence, it makes it very easy to get out of sync and have a mid-air. I change the formation parameters considerbly in those conditions, putting the subject in places where no matter what happens, no contact can take place. As I've said before, it is so easy to tap a wing or a tail and the day is over for everyone. It happens all the time.
