Love in the Sky

©JP Parmley




Here is why I always have a camera sitting around ready to go.  Even if it is an older (2003) Canon 10d with a just as old Tamron 28-75mm lens.  30 seconds after I noticed the formation it was gone.  If I had to assemble a camera and lens I would have missed this shot.  

The camera was in a low resolution setting so the the picture is pixelated a little. It is kind of a cool pic anyways.

Enjoy

JP

Rainbow of Colors

©JP Parmley

Here are a few quick and easy pictures you can capture with minimal setup.  The variety of different effects and colors is unlimited.  To set this up you will need a blank and unused CD or DVD, a tripod that will allow you to shoot straight down, a remote shutter cord and your camera.

I used the light painting techniques discussed in earlier posts, the only difference is this setup provides the CD to act as a prism and water to reflect all the colorful light.   Use a dropper to place each water drop.  You can mix up the sizes and density of the drops to get different affects.  I used either a small Mag-lite or LED flashlight and moved them around during the exposure. Try illuminating the CD and droplets from different angles and distances.  You will get something different every time.

In each of these pictures I used a shutter of 15 seconds, f6.3 and an ISO of 100.   

 

Blue Angels

©JP Parmley

The Blue Angels were in Dayton this weekend for the air show.  If you have never seen them, you need to find the closest show to you and go.  It is worth the trip!  

Here are some images that I captured during their show.  There are a few things to set up before you start taking pictures of planes flying over 500 mph towards each other with a closing speed of 1000mph+.  If you just turn on the camera and start shooting, most of your pics are going to be out of focus or the camera will not take the picture right when you want.

1) Set drive to AI SERVO.  This will allow you to gain focus and keep it as planes approach at these speeds. 
2) Set the metering to SPOT.  If you are shooting against a bright sky and are using an evaluative meter, the plane will be underexposed.
3) For these pics I wanted to maintain an aperture that I know my lens performs well at and is sharp.  I set the camera to an aperture priority (Av) at 5.6.
4) Next, I wanted a shutter in the 1000-2500 range depending on if I was shooting into the sun. So I adjusted the ISO until the shutter was consistently in this range while focused on a plane in the sky.  ISO 400 is where I landed.
5) Finally, the white balance was changed to outdoors (sun). 

So with a Canon 7D, a 70-200 2.8L IS lens and a Tamron 1.4x extender, I had an effective zoom of 448mm.  As F18s approached, I would grab focus as they approached and then shot in the highest drive mode at 8fps and shot away.

Take off with a 90 degree vertical climb

My favorite shot of the day.  Vapor trails off the wings.

The diamond formation

Think about this....over 1000mph closing rate and I got it dead on top of each other!

I could have used a slower shutter to correct the exposure of the planes.  Oh that's right we always shoot RAW so we have full control afterwards!

Up, Up and away!

Final Salute.

 

Fireworks

©JP Parmley

Here are a few pics of the fireworks our neighbor shot off.  I chose to take some longer exposures to get a slightly different effect.  The longer the exposure, the longer the light trails will be.

Each of these were taken at 1 sec, f5.6, ISO1000 on a Canon 7D and a 16-35 2.8L II lens.  Because of the long exposure and slightly higher ISO, I reduced the noise in Lightroom 3 and cropped them to fill the frame.
 
I'm headed to the Dayton Air Show on Sunday with an effective 720MM zoom!  Hopefully I will have some neat Blue Angels pics to share early next week.