I was taking my son out for several nights in a row to try and find the Neowise Comet. Unfortunately he couldn’t find it, but I did manage to take some shots of the moon and had some fun being out with him. The best days to see the comet unfortunately ended up being some hazy days here in Eastvale, that made it really hard to see the comet in the night sky. I did manage to get this shot of the moon that I liked. I had my camera on the tripod using the 100-400 lens to take the shot.
Photography
Hummingbirds
I hung a hummingbird feeder in my backyard and have been steadily moving it closer to my door so that I can shoot the little buddies that are flying around. The first shot is when I first hung the feeder and the next ones are as I moved it closer to my door. I like being able to sit behind my camera on a tripod and shoot the birds while working at my desk. Gives me something to do during the day and I am in boring meetings. I’ve found the hummingbirds come in the morning and in the afternoon. They are really fun to watch as they come to eat.
WRX Early in the morning
I took my camera out in the early morning and found a place to shoot my car. Thought this was a good shot that I really liked, I used my platypod to get the camera low and do the leading lines up to the car. I has happy with how most of the shot came out and what it looked like.
Planes of Fame Vultee BT-13 Flight
Planes of Fame flew their BT-13 on 7/4 and 7/5. I went out both days to practice and grab some shots of it. Since it was so hot I just hid in my car and waited for the plane to take off so that I could get shots of it from the parking lot. I should have used my teleconverter to get a little closer on some of the shots or not used my 3 stop ND filter.
Planes of Fame PT-17 Stearman
Planes of Fame flew their Stearman on Saturday 6/21 and Sunday 6/22, they did a brief presentation on it talking about it and then took it up in the air. However the day was really overcast and the shots weren’t very good that came out of it. They decided to take the plane up again on Sunday so I went over and luckily there was sun out so I was able to get some much better shots of the plane as it flew around. I worked on testing out the wide focus tracking to keep the plane in focus and work on my panning skills. Pretty happy with how these shots came out and the level detail in them.
Falcon in flight
I was on my way over to the Chino Airport to photograph the Stearman flying over. As I was headed over I spotted this Peregrine Falcon flying around. I pulled over to take some shots of this magnificent predator out hunting for food. It was my first chance to try and capture a bird in flight and I am pretty happy with the results. Minimal fixes required in Lightroom to brighten the photo up a little.
Memorial Day WW2 Aircraft Flyover
So the local airplane museums and aircraft historical societies setup a flyover of WW2 aircraft for Memorial Day to honor the veterans and front line works. The path was laid out in advance and started in Riverside and then ended in Chino. The flight consisted of DC-3s, C-47s, P51, and Douglas SBDs. I drove over to Loma Linda University Hospital to try and catch the planes as they flew over at the beginning. I then hightailed it over to the Chino Airport to catch the planes as they landed for the end of the flight. I was mostly happy with how the shots came out of the big planes, I wasn’t so happy with the smaller planes. I just didn’t get the close up shots I was looking for and wasn’t happy with the crop that I ended up doing. I think I just need some more practice with hand holding and doing the panning. I don’t think the problem is with the gear and the problem is more with the shooter. When shooting with the 100-400 on the smaller sensor it’s roughly a 150-600mm camera so I think I’ve got the reach. Just need to work on the hand holding to get the steadiness.
Shooting the Thunderbirds flyover Los Angeles
During the Thunderbird flyover of LA I went to my local hospital that looked like it was going to be in the flight path of the F16s. Unfortunately they didn’t exactly fly over the hospital they were a little far out and flying right at the tree line in the distance. So by the time my camera was able to track them these were the best I could get.
Camera Settings:
ISO 400
100-400mm on an A6500 so the lens was 600mm
1/4000
f6.3
I kept the aperture wide and raised the ISO from 100 to 400 to make sure the camera was shooting as fast as possible to give me the best chance as possible to catch some images. Luckily I had setup for this ahead of time as I wouldn’t have had any time to make changes once I saw the planes flying.
Just shooting in the backyard
I haven’t been able to do much shooting for planes and such so I have been stuck in my backyard and taking shots. Just a couple of simple shots with my 100-400 on the A6500 with a polarizing filter on. Going through all of the notes for my camera the Phase Detection focusing only works below F11 so I am testing out different ND filters to see what will allow me keep the aperture down so that the Wide Angle focusing with focus lock will work. One reason to always read the manual so that you can find out about the individual quirks of the camera systems that you are using.
A nice lizard just sitting there sunning itself and then our really scraggily Schnauzer Sydney.
Photo Printing from Lightroom
While I have been home I have been watching the KelbyOne videos on Youtube and watched this one about Photo Printing so I decided to test it out and see what worked best for me. I did most of what Scott Kelby recommended and included screenshots of my settings down below. I then submitted the photos to Bay Photo to test out their service as an 11×14 print. I think the biggest thing I learned was the sharpening and then the brightness for printing. I used this photo as my test photo:
This is Spanish Shawl Nudibranch that I shot while underwater. Unfortunately my prints never looked as good as the screen. So hopefully after this test I will have photos that look better. I chose Glossy for the photos as I am printing on Luster with Bay photo.
The photos came in and I have to say that the 20% looked the best and most closely resembled what I was looking for. Now that I have these settings I am going to keep going forward with printing some more photos and displaying them around my house. I mean what else do I have to do during the safer at home order. Might as well make my area pretty and enjoy it.
Joseph Jenkins 