On the Way to Iceland

After thick cloud all the way from Stansted to Iceland, the sky cleared enough to get some great views of the South Coast and Reykjavik. Images of Keflavik airport for Phil!

The Vulcan at Clacton

Much as I detest anything designed to kill, there is a lot to admire in the design innovation and the engineering expertise that went into the construction of the massive Vulcan plane and then the dedication to keep it flying. It was certainly shown off to its very best at Clacton Air Show yesterday. It is due to fly for only one more season.

Shuttleworth Evening Flying

The light in the first part of the evening was ideal - low sunlight with plenty of interesting clouds as well as blue patches. The clouds built up in the second half and it started to rain just as the show finished at 7 oclock. After last year's trials, I settled on a 640th of a second which gave a chance of sharp images but with some movement in the propeller.

Off to Guernsey

When it eventually arrived at Stansted after a technical fault at Jersey, this was our plane to take me 2 hours late to Guernsey.
Photo for Phil - it was noisier in this ATR152(? correct me if wrong) than in your Beechcraft. Also it was a head wind so quite slow progress.

Experiments in Shutterspeed.

We spent yesterday afternoon and evening at the Shuttleworth Collection, photographing birds of prey in the afternoon and then switching to veteran airplanes in the evening. I experimented with different shutterspeeds for the photographs and it has reinforced my puzzlement as to why we have such rigid and different conventions for the two subjects.

With birds in flight, it is generally thought that the shutterspeed should be such that all motion is stopped and everything is sharp. Hence in the first Kite picture, 1/1000sec is too slow for the wing tip motion. The second kite image at 1/1600 is sharp throughout as is the Saker Falcon at 1/1250.

With airplanes (and cars etc), the opposite holds in that there should be some motion in the propeller (or wheels). Hence the image taken at 1/1000sec although very sharp isnot acceptable as the prop motion has been frozen. I tried at both 1/250 and 1/400 but found that, as I was using my camera on a tripod, I didn't manage to follow through sufficiently well with the panning so ended up images that were not sharp. My best images were a compromise at 1/800 sec