why do my plane shots keep getting rejected with "grainy, soft"?

[robertwsimpson]

I have a few suggestions:

1. do not shoot with a wide aperture. shoot at about f8, as that is where most consumer lenses seem to be the sharpest. With a shutter speed of 1/2500 on that picture, you've got plenty of room to stop down the aperture. You'll be shocked at how much sharper your pictures will be.

2. when sharpening, use a larger pixel diameter. at full size, and with a subject like this, I would use something like radius 2.5, amount 150, threshold 500 with unsharp mask. My raw converter is different from photoshop, so your numbers might be different from that with gimp. I'm not sure.

3. make sure that you use noise reduction. on photos with distinct lines and sharp edges, you can almost go overboard on noise reduction without making the picture look awful.

that's what I would do. the main thing is the aperture.

 

[lamergod]

Did you have auo iso on?? Did you check your exif to know it's iso 200 or by memory when you were shooting

 

[Unspoiled]

That's a bit of a tough one.

Have you tried to use a single focus point? Your auto focus might be trying to take in the wing tip and the body of the plane and only getting one in focus.

Also, have you tried a reset on your camera? Pushing both the exposure comp button and the AF button at the same time? They should have green dots next to them.

 

[biggerben]

I don' have auto ISO on and I always shoot at ISO200 unless it's really dark.

The plane way easily far away enough so it wouldn't even matter if it focussed on wingtip. But I did shoot with single focus point.

 

[Derrel]

I looked at your full-sized sample photo--it's simply not as crisp and sharp as I have seen on many other aircraft photographs. If your lens was slightly dirty, especially on its rear element, or if your lens has a low-grade UV protective filter in front of it--any of those things could cause the degree of sharpness loss your photo shows. The photo appears to be in-focus, but it is not "Crisp".

Maybe the lens suffered a knock and has an element slightly decentered. Regardless, I think if you had a better quality lens, like a Nikon 300mm f/4, or even the older 300mm f/4.5 ED~IF in AiS mount, your images would be crisp and sharp. If you've eliminated the possibility of a cheap UV filter and a dirty lens surface, then the bottom line is the lens does not seem to be doing its job; f/8 at 1/2500 second at ISO 200 ought to produce a good shot.

 

[inTempus]

It's kind of hard for me to see the details as I'm on a laptop right now. But first off, the white balance is off on the shot. Here's a corrected version.

Secondly, was this shot as a JPG or RAW? I ask because there is some strange artifacting around the edge of the aircraft and in the sky (the graininess you're talking about). This was probably introduced in your post work on the image. If you have a RAW it would be nice to see so that I can get a better look at the image.

 

[robertwsimpson]

I looked at your full-sized sample photo--it's simply not as crisp and sharp as I have seen on many other aircraft photographs. If your lens was slightly dirty, especially on its rear element, or if your lens has a low-grade UV protective filter in front of it--any of those things could cause the degree of sharpness loss your photo shows. The photo appears to be in-focus, but it is not "Crisp".

Maybe the lens suffered a knock and has an element slightly decentered. Regardless, I think if you had a better quality lens, like a Nikon 300mm f/4, or even the older 300mm f/4.5 ED~IF in AiS mount, your images would be crisp and sharp. If you've eliminated the possibility of a cheap UV filter and a dirty lens surface, then the bottom line is the lens does not seem to be doing its job; f/8 at 1/2500 second at ISO 200 ought to produce a good shot.

Photo was shot at f5.6, which is wide open for this lens.


I'm guessing this is also a heavy crop.

 

[biggerben]

I guess I'll try it at f/8 next time ...
the crop actually isn't that heavy, the length of the plane fills over half of the photo

i shot in JPEG and not in RAW. maybe I'll try both next time, but the JPG is pretty good and corrected for chromatic aberration for example, which the RAW is not.

Is there any cheap way to test how good the lens is?

 

[Battou]

I guess I'll try it at f/8 next time ...
the crop actually isn't that heavy, the length of the plane fills over half of the photo

No, stop that lens atleast half way down you want f/11 to f/16 maybe even go down to f/22. these aircraft simply are bigger than your DOF at the more open apertures.

i shot in JPEG and not in RAW. maybe I'll try both next time, but the JPG is pretty good and corrected for chromatic aberration for example, which the RAW is not.

Is there any cheap way to test how good the lens is?

I would likey be shooting raw my self given how strict their approval panel seems to be.


as for testing your lens you can test it and compare it to others of the focal leingth provided you can get one, maybe rent one but I would actually reccomend picking up a 200mm or 300mm prime telephoto and using that for your aircraft photos.

 

[robertwsimpson]

I wouldn't go farther than f10 at the most, as on a crop sensor, the higher f stops are plagued with refraction. at distance, f8 should be more than adequate to cover the plane as far as DOF goes. f10 would be more than enough. if you want to try going higher than that, you are going to start getting slightly blurry again, as well as sacrificing shutter speed due to the smaller aperture opening. but hey, don't take my word for it, experiment!

 

[KmH]

The 18-200 is a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none lens and just isn't up to the task of making stock images.

The composition and perspective of the image you posted is another issue. It's pretty static. It pretty much ignores the basic guidelines. If you're going to break the rule of thirds, you need a pretty good reason. From underneath and a straight on from the side perspective isn't very dynamic.

As robertwsimpson pointed out f/5.6 and wide open leave the lens far from it's sweet spot, sharpness wise, and stock houses aren't really looking for cropped images, which is where the noise problem is coming from.

 

[biggerben]

The composition and perspective of the image you posted is another issue. It's pretty static. It pretty much ignores the basic guidelines. If you're going to break the rule of thirds, you need a pretty good reason. From underneath and a straight on from the side perspective isn't very dynamic.

you may not like the composition, but it's exactly what planespotters.net, jetphotos.net, airliners.com etc are looking for! I do have some more artistic shots of planes:







the first two didn't get accepted because you can't see the tailnumber, the third because it's too soft (it was pretty foggy, i cleared a lot of it through gimp though). i however like them anyway

edit: first one should be turned a bit, i uploaded the wrong one

 

[Kegger]

That particular lens is it's sharpest between f/8 and f/11.

Stop it down, and it will get incredibly sharp.

 

[altitude604]

these guys pretty much have it covered.

i have 5 shots on jetphotos.net and i've had probably double that rejected for similar reasons. just keep at it and your post-processing workflow will get better as you figure out what works for you and your particular setup.

example #1 of an accepted shot of mine:
Camera Make: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi
Flash Used: No
Focal Length: 33.0mm
Exposure Time: 0.0016 s (1/640)
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO equiv: 100
White Balance: Manual
Metering Mode: Center Weight

and example #2 of an accepted shot:
Camera Make: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi
Focal Length: 18.0mm
Exposure Time: 0.0006 s (1/1600)
Aperture: f/4.5
ISO equiv: 100
White Balance: Manual
Metering Mode: Center Weight

Hope these help you out a little. Be looking forward to more of your shots!

 

[RancerDS]

While the so-called experts are picking and choosing what photographs to use, after having done personal research of various combat aircraft "stock photos", think that their selectivity may be costing them some great shots. My problem is that their guidelines often deter the various perspectives which show off specific features of the aircraft.

Regarding their perspective requirements - my biggest issue is that the underside-side angle shots are ignored to often; which are the ones I have always preferred to see the flaps/ailerons and lower body contours (not to mention hard-points and payloads on military birds).