F22 Raptor C&C

[camera shy]

Cool plane, shame I didn't get such cool shots.

1.

2.

3.

Any advice?

 

[RobNZ]

For 1 and 2, a tighter crop, the aircraft is the subject, the blue sky offers nothing.
Levels, hue saturation, surface blur, selective sharpen etc etc.

3 I would say is a lost cause IMO.

Could be a nice couple of real nice shots with the original file size? Not going to be razor sharp and full of detail, but should be ok.

Must be a hell of a thing to see/hear and feel these in flight, we dont have much of an airforce down here these days, best I have ever seen was an F4 Phantom doing a real low simulated attack pass, old skool but man was that thing cool.

 

[fokker]

What gear were you using? I guess the plane was probably going pretty fast so can't have been easy to frame and focus.

Nice edit on #1 Rob.

 

[camera shy]

I was using my recently purchased Panasonic FZ38 with its 18x optical zoom.

It was tough I have to admit but I did the best I could.

What software did you use to edit the pics Rob?

 

[RobNZ]

Thanks Fokker.

I used CS5.

 

[Morpheuss]

those are decent shots I like the one were it is showing you the bomb bay doors being opened. Did you get any other shots of it?

 

[camera shy]

Thanks for the encouragement.

It's a pity nothing can be done with number 3 as I really like this one.

Yes, I forgot to say earlier, excellent editing Rob. You really have bought out the best in the pics. How did you make the adjustments and get the images sharper?

I took loads of pictures Morpheuss but it's just getting the time to sort through them all and edit those I can do something with. I just selected three of the Raptor and quickly cropped and resized them, nothing more.

Thanks again.

 

[RobNZ]

Yes, I forgot to say earlier, excellent editing Rob. You really have bought out the best in the pics. How did you make the adjustments and get the images sharper?

Layers, lots of layers and masking, I usually use unsharp mask to sharpen then mask again to only sharpen what needs sharpening. Some processes are done globally, some are more selective.

At present my process would be levels, saturation, mask off the aircraft, surface blur the sky a little (to reduce any noise), dodge and burn the aircraft if needed, duplicate & sharpen, alter opacity to suit change sharpened layer style to luminosity to reduce any induced colour noise. STOP, do something else for 5 minutes, have another look with "fresh eyes" make any final adjustments, done.

Even the above is somewhat simplified, but I think I spent about 10 minutes on each pic, have them all loaded in tabs, so I work on the first til its "done" then I work on the next til "done" then I go back and check them against each other and I always make sure I have the original as the background untouched to really compare before and after.

My processing changes day to day as I learn new techniques and better ways of doing things. I practice alot...haha.

 

[Oldschool92']

Is that the bomb bay that's open in picture #2? Just curious

 

[Morpheuss]

awesome I can't wait to see some more of the photo's. I remember when we had one when they were considering bringing the f-22 to my base in south carolina they had it going strait up and tumbling end over end and then taking off like it was nothing and also all the crazy menouvers it was doing... i so wanted to take pictures of it... but when it isn't an airshow you aren't allowed to take any photos of the flightline unless you have proper clearance...

 

[dak1b]

#1 wud b ur best shot here imop.