Soliciting opinions/advice on photo

[Chris Kennedy]

I'm a new guy and this is my first attempt at posting a photo, so I would like the hear what you think. Please feel free to offer advice on how it could have been done better, or could be improved by further editing.

This is Care Flight 8, an Agusta A119, N303CF, landing for fuel at DVT.

[Joe Copalman]

Hi Chris,

Welcome aboard! 

Not a bad photo, but there are a few things to consider.  Please take the following recommendations in the constructive manner in which they are intended.

1. Shutter speed.  With helicopters, you always want to try to capture a decent amount of rotor blur to indicate motion.  Typically with helos you want to aim for 1/200 or below.  It's next to impossible to get a full rotor-disc shot, but the giveaway is the tail rotor.  These rotate much faster than the main rotors, so even if the mains aren't blurred too much, the tail rotor will tell the story.  Aside from letting the viewer know that it wasn't some kind of emergency where the rotors just froze in mid-flight, it makes for a much more dynamic and interesting image.

2. Light.  It looks like this was taken during the roughest part of the day, between 11am and 1pm when the sun is almost directly overhead.  Sometimes you really can't do much about the lighting, but if you had another shot where most of the aircraft's fuselage wasn't in its own shadow, I would have posted that instead (provided it was equally as sharp, properly exposed, etc).  The saving grace here is the bold red paint on the fuselage, which helps make it "pop" in spite of the difficult lighting.

3. Noise/Image quality.  You mentioned in your intro that you are somewhat limited by your gear, which is something ALL of us can relate with.  As long as you are aware of the challenges posed by your rig and you know which photos can be saved in spite of them (and even more importantly, the ability to know which photos should be deleted), you should still be able to take good, solid shots.  In this case, it looks to be about as sharp as you're going to get with your current set-up, but a little noise reduction and some sharpening should help out a bit.  Another way of minimizing the effect of noise is to make the image smaller - 1000-1200 pixels wide is just fine for posting on the web, with 1024x683 being more or less the standard.   

4. Framing.  Actually, the framing isn't so bad here.  The major challenge is the clutter to the right of the frame in the background, which draws the eye somewhat - I think the impact of this is lessened by the bold colors of the subject, but clutter like that is always something to be conscious of.  A tighter crop might have the dual effect of cutting the background clutter and giving a bit more "impact," but it might also draw more attention to the noise and softness, which is one of the major pitfalls of tighter crops.

Like I said, not a bad photo overall, but a few tweaks might make it a bit better.  Thanks for sharing.

[Chris Kennedy]

Thanks for the input, Joe.

1. I will definitely show down the shutter next time. I agree that this would have looked a lot better with the rotors blurred.

2. You are right about the time. It was 11:45. Not much choice about that though, except not to be there then and thus not get any shots of that machine at all. I wanted to use a mostly front view like this one and the only one I got, due to the approach course he took, was from the shadow side. I got a few side-on shots that had more sun, but they were also taken from farther away and even less sharp than this one. It's difficult with helicopters landing there because they don't have a fixed flight path. Sometimes they come in from the east and sometimes from the west, so it's hard to figure out ahead of time where to shoot from on the deck. The fixed wings at least have to all go the same way. I prefer photos of helicopters though.

3. I can afford to make a major investment in a better photo rig right now, so I just have to do the best I can with what I have. My expectations are lower than those of you guys with the major bucks invested. I don't have any real experience with trying to sharpen a photo or reduce the noise. I will experiment. I will reduce the size next time though, although in this particular case using your width to height ratio would have brought in more of the junk in the background.

4. In general, the observation deck at Deer Valley is a good place to shoot from because it faces north and there are few obstacles. However, there are pretty busy backgrounds no matter which way you look.

[Jbong]

Hey Chris, I to go upto KDVT often for some spotting. You should PM when you go and we can hook up.

And Joe always gives sold advice.

[Joe Copalman]

Chris, I definitely feel your pain on the time issue.  We get a lot of really cool stuff that comes through Willie earlier in the day, and it's one of those "shoot it in the light you're given, or don't shoot it at all."  I know some guys who take the "don't shoot it at all" path, and others who shoot anything they see regardless of the light.  I'm somewhere in the middle, as I'm sure most of us are, just at different points between the two extremes.  The important thing is to be aware of the challenges of shooting is sub-optimal lighting conditions and to know the capabilities and limits of the tools available to you.

On the matter of gear, shoot with what you have and learn to finesse the maximum performance level out of it.  Dave L. shot with an advanced point-and-shoot until recently and developed rather nicely.  I'm still using an XTi, which was Canon's entry-level DSLR almost four years/three generations ago.  In looking at some of the shots you've posted to airport-data and Flickr, you seem to be doing well with what you have.

Clutter is something we all deal with - at Willie it's runway and taxiway signs, windsocks, other aircraft, etc.  At Sky Harbor it's the fenceline, lightpoles, construction equipment/scaffolding, other aircraft, etc.  You can deal with it to a degree through editing (I tend to clone out whatever I can to free the image from distractions), but it is better to anticipate clutter and to plan your shots accordingly (i.e. shoot when the aircraft is between taxiway signs or lightpoles or after it has cleared the fence).  Again, sometimes the luxury of such a choice doesn't exist, and we just do the best we can with the hand we're dealt.

[Chris Kennedy]

Thanks again, Joe.

I'm definitely one of the shoot it anyway group. I'm interested in all kinds of aircraft and would rather have a less than optimal photo of one than not have one at all, because the light isn't right. It's probably sacrilegious to say so here, but I guess I lean more toward being a spotter than a photographer. I like getting photos of aircraft I haven't seen before, even if the conditions aren't optimal.

I hope we'll find ourselves in the same location at the same time one of these days so I can watch a master at work. 

[Chris Kennedy]

Here is another try. At least I got the rotors moving. This was taken at 1/250. That's as slow as I could go in this instance. Shooting a white helicopter a little while earlier, I wasn't able to go lower than 1/400.

This is unedited, other than a little bit of cropping. Any advice on adjustments would be appreciated.

This is Angel 3, N407VV, oddly enough a Bell 407, landing at DVT.

[Joe Copalman]

Good stuff.  1/250 is decent for helos - it's a good compromise between getting some rotor blur and keeping the shutter fast enough to yield a sharp image.

Might benefit from a touch of contrast, but other than that, really good stuff.

[Jay Beckman]

This looks quite good Chris but if this was cropped at all in post processing, consider opening it back up a little to give it a little more "living space."

IMO, it's a tad tight around the edges here.

[Chris Kennedy]

Wow, you guys are fast!

Here's a (very slight) contrast increase for Joe and a re-crop for Jay. You can see why I cropped it fairly closely.

[Jay Beckman]

I see the taxiway sign and the light fixture but they don't bother me really.

They say "Airport" to me and are expected pieces of airport operations.  As Joe mentioned above, one can try and avoid having such things touch (and therefore blend into) your subject but simply having them in the frame isn't a deal breaker to me.

[Chris Kennedy]

So, do you think is the crop is in the right range now, Jay?

[Jay Beckman]

For a hovering/landing helo, yes...

If it were in flight, I'd crop it with a little more room in front so it has somewhere to "go" in the frame.

[Chris Kennedy]

Thanks again, Jay. I have always tried to kind of center the fuselage in the frame.

Here is another one (quick crop, no other editing yet). Is this anywhere near what you would do? I guess I should look at some of you photos shouldn't I? I'll take a look at your web site.

[Chris Kennedy]

Jay,

I see by the photos on your site that you tend to have the aircraft just slightly off center toward the back. I'll try that.