The resurrection!

And no more parts needed, as the forum now allows for multiple pages so we can put together a great collection of awesome photos. I've also dropped the "recent" in the thread title, as people should also be encouraged to post incredible photos that they've only just discovered. The only thing I ask is that the photos that are posted are from the A.net DB.

Let the begin!

Definitely deserves a place here.

Awesom! that looks magical

Night shots like these are very very intriguing and really made me go wow!
I tried to do something similar a few days ago with ItAF Tornados making night training missions but I had no luck, as I completely wrong camera settings and I took very noisy shots.

I would love to know the settings the Emirates A380 was shot at!?!?

Smoketrails wrote:

I would love to know the settings the Emirates A380 was shot at!?!?

You can try to E-mail the photographer (and post the answer here ).

airkas1 wrote:

Smoketrails wrote:

I would love to know the settings the Emirates A380 was shot at!?!?

You can try to E-mail the photographer (and post the answer here ).

And I thought you were going to make it easy for me Kas

Never!

I contacted Keiichi Egawa the other day regarding his night photos. I'm a HUGE fan of those and they're good inspiration and motivation to go out and experiment myself. He was kind enough to send me 4 of his recent photos with the EXIF included. Seeing that info was very interesting to say the least.
Moral of the story: contacting the photographer works


In the meantime, I'm loving this moody cockpit close-up:

I can imagine for those kind of nightshots you need at least a f2.8 lens and a full frame camera right?

spompert wrote:

I can imagine for those kind of nightshots you need at least a f2.8 lens and a full frame camera right?

I would think so yes.
To give an idea; I work with a Canon 5DII and 85mm 1.8. Keiichi Egawa mentioned that he uses the Nikon D5 and 105mm 1.4.

Respect. I didn`t even know the F-numbers went that low. Really great you share those photos with us on the site.

Such a beautiful photo!

The Qantas is quite interesting to me. As A beginning student pilot, Aviation weather is particularly interesting. Finding the weather that allows the photo to have more composition than a sunny side on is something that I have been trying to do for a while now. The Qantas being shot on a day with a relatively high humidity allows the vapor to form on op of the wings and creating the perfect photo

FAN-TASTIC shot. And look at that EXIF

spompert wrote:

Respect. I didn`t even know the F-numbers went that low. Really great you share those photos with us on the site.

Canon do an 85mm f1.2 and a 50mm f1.2, if you've got deepish pockets. The depth of field is very shallow though at that aperture. 37mm at a distance of 2m, apparently, for the 85mm. (About how far your nose sticks out from your face.)

I've always thought this one to be rather spectacular.

Smoketrails wrote:

airkas1 wrote:

Smoketrails wrote:

I would love to know the settings the Emirates A380 was shot at!?!?

You can try to E-mail the photographer (and post the answer here ).

And I thought you were going to make it easy for me Kas

Some of those shots, especially the one on the home page (linked above) are usually done with the plane flying over some very bright lights (eg, stadium/sporting field flood lights) and using a big aperture with high ISO settings. This is one I did back in 2012, the Captain here was on his last flight:


F/3.5, 1/60sec, ISO6400, 70mm. Nikon D3S and 24-70mm F/2.8 Zoom Nikkor

The plane flew over a hockey field at night while the local hockey team were training, with the flood lights on. Enough light to make the plane fairly bright. The other photo above looks like it might have been done in a similar way. Look up the location of the photo on Google maps and see if there are any sporting fields or parks with bright lights around them.

Hoping Szabo Gabor will chime in here. It's a great shot!

zachary165 wrote:

The Qantas is quite interesting to me. As A beginning student pilot, Aviation weather is particularly interesting. Finding the weather that allows the photo to have more composition than a sunny side on is something that I have been trying to do for a while now. The Qantas being shot on a day with a relatively high humidity allows the vapor to form on op of the wings and creating the perfect photo

I can remember a day at Sydney airport where the fog in the morning was so heavy that virtually everything was diverting elsewhere. Delta tried landing on RWY34L and gave up after two attempts IIRC, heading off to Brisbane instead. And the United crew on a B747-422 (remember those?) tried runway 34L and then gave up. They then tried the other direction (runway 16R) and made the landing work, with virtually no visibility. We could hear them decelerating down the runway in front of us, but couldn't see them. Later on in the morning when the fog was burning away, virtually every plane had those fog effects and streaming vortices coming from the wing-tips. Except the fog over the wing was so dense that it completly obscured the fuselage of the plane, leaving just the front of the plane and the back, and the engines visible. Quite surreal.

airkas1 wrote:

FAN-TASTIC shot. And look at that EXIF

If you have a D4 and F/2.8 lens, you can do that. Of course it still takes skill to expose it properly, but at least you get the opportunity. I've done a few like that myself. I remember doing that with the D3S at 10,000ISO on an Emirates shot and one of the Russian photographers questioned immediately if it was a D3S. Having the F/2.8 lens makes it so much easier in combination with ISO6400 or ISO10,000. But again, you still need to know your camera and have the eye for the shot.

Just look at those colors!

That is better than all the helicopter spotting photos put together. Stunning location and lighting.

Really stunning photo:



Well done Keiichi Egawa - another in a line of stunning photos. That's how you use ambient light in the most stunning way.

Smoketrails wrote:

I would love to know the settings the Emirates A380 was shot at!?!?

Just discovered this thread. The photo was shot with a Nikon D750 and a Nikkor 70-200mm F/2.8 (200mm, F/2.8, 1/25s, ISO5000)

ZRHairport wrote:

Smoketrails wrote:

I would love to know the settings the Emirates A380 was shot at!?!?

Just discovered this thread. The photo was shot with a Nikon D750 and a Nikkor 70-200mm F/2.8 (200mm, F/2.8, 1/25s, ISO5000)

I can never seem to get a high ISO image cleaned up as nicely as you have on the Emirates as well as some of the other magnificent night images on this thread. Anyone willing to share their workflow?

Jehan

jelpee wrote:

I can never seem to get a high ISO image cleaned up as nicely as you have on the Emirates as well as some of the other magnificent night images on this thread. Anyone willing to share their workflow?

Jehan

I use the noise reduction tool in Lightroom and if the photo is really grainy/noisy also Google Nik Dfine. But I still have to find the right balance between reducing noise and losing details.

ZRHairport wrote:

jelpee wrote:

I can never seem to get a high ISO image cleaned up as nicely as you have on the Emirates as well as some of the other magnificent night images on this thread. Anyone willing to share their workflow?

Jehan

I use the noise reduction tool in Lightroom and if the photo is really grainy/noisy also Google Nik Dfine. But I still have to find the right balance between reducing noise and losing details.

Thanks. I use the NR tool in PSE but have not tried Google Nik Dfine. WIll have to take a look. You do fine work, by the way!

Jehan

And this next one isn't that much of a WOW-factor settings-wise, but it's a really nice and great quality overview of this supernice place. I haven't seen a photo like it from this angle:

jelpee wrote:

ZRHairport wrote:

Smoketrails wrote:

I would love to know the settings the Emirates A380 was shot at!?!?

Just discovered this thread. The photo was shot with a Nikon D750 and a Nikkor 70-200mm F/2.8 (200mm, F/2.8, 1/25s, ISO5000)

I can never seem to get a high ISO image cleaned up as nicely as you have on the Emirates as well as some of the other magnificent night images on this thread. Anyone willing to share their workflow?

Jehan

I used to use the default Camera Raw noise reduction. But I also had Topaz Denoise:

http://www.topazlabs.com/denoise

But you still have to do a lot of masking when applying the noise reduction with Topaz as it can make parts of the image look very washed out. On newer Nikon cameras like the one mentioned above and with those kinds of settings, you should be getting a fairly clean image right out of the camera that won't require too much special editing. Only when going up to ISO8000 or ISO10000 does it get difficult. And also make sure you get the exposure absolutely spot on first go, you don't get much scope to brighten those night time shots in post-processing without showing up a lot of noise.

Otherwise, if you can handle a slower shutter speed (and if the kind of shot allows it), do that - it'll let you use less ISO.

This was the hardest photo I ever did take, from 4 years ago:



I had F/2.8, 200mm (with a crop down to 5050x3367 from 7360x4912), ISO6400, 1/13sec and absolutely no ambient light of any sort. The plane was also poorly lit. I used the standard Camera Raw 6.7 noise reduction to get it to that level, but no special noise reduction (or sharpening) methods which you'd use if it was to be for here. I wasn't totally happy with that photo, but it was a pretty hard one to get anyway so I can't really complain. AN-124s are rare around here, and to the naked eye, you could barely see a dark shape thundering along the runway.

Another way is to use the multiple layers with blur filters and do masking of the noise reduction layer and then use blending modes to cut out the particular types of noise you don't want in the image.

As for the photo that made me go wow, it was certainly this one of a Sud Caravelle from LTU:

I think all WOWair photos can get you Wow, right ?!

Lovely photo:

YES! I've been waiting for this one to come online after I accidentally stumbled upon it in the queue a few days ago:

The photo of this Aeroflot 777 made me go OMG!



I had to do a double take - because not only is it a photo of a location that's not often represented on Airliners.net but I happened to be stood not far from the photographer (whom I don't know and have never met), taking a video of the very same aircraft landing. I uploaded the video to my channel whilst in Thailand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l51JfYAQm_o where I spent the whole of my holiday on the beach by the runway. I had to double take when I saw this photo pop up on Facebook. It gave me an OMG and a WOW at the same time.

love the heat distorting the sun

zachary165 wrote:

love the heat distorting the sun

That plane runs on bio-fuel...made from beans and onions

zachary165 wrote:

love the heat distorting the sun

It's like one meme

Always pure joy to come across such good photos when screening.

Yes, the above is a great air to air photo. No helicopter spotting mission is going to get that.

These two deservedly came up on the front page:



Superb photos.

airkas1 wrote:

Totally agree with you - that's amazing. One of the most stunning shots I've seen in a while.

Normally a motive rejection, but holy sh*t the quality Just had to accept it.

Quality first. Fully agree! Today's equipment, when in capable hands can lead to spectacular results indeed.

airkas1 wrote:

Normally a motive rejection, but holy sh*t the quality Just had to accept it.

We are all glad you accepted it. Incredible details in that photo. I wonder how the original framing was before cropping.

Lucasz' this front page photo also deserves a mention in this thread

Those pictures are stunning!

Not your typical WOW-photo, but the quality is superb for the size:

The above photo of the B2 really is stunning. Unusual angle of the photo and the clarity of it. Wow indeed.

Hmm, this one is pretty nice too:

JohnKrist wrote:

zachary165 wrote:

love the heat distorting the sun

That plane runs on bio-fuel...made from beans and onions

Looks like a big hot fart LOL

Speechless

Very impressive one ! The fireworks seem very close to the airport !

I could easily fill this thread with Keiichi's night shot collection.