Hi all First - thanks again to those who provided advice a month or so ago on photographing from a light plane. This flight was part of our recent trip to the 'red Centre' of Australia.
The flight was in a Cessna 210, carrying 4 passengers plus the pilot. The lack of wing struts on this plane was a bonus for photography. The two biggest problems were reflections in the windows, which were difficult to avoid, and the mild jerkiness of the flight. I used my K200D with the 16-45 mm zoom attached. I had other lenses available but the cramped conditions made it difficult to change lenses, so I eventually gave up on the idea. As it happened, the 16-45 mm range proved to be pretty much ideal. My wife used an old Optio for the first part of the flight but it wasn't up to the job so she commandeered the *istDS with 50 mm f1.7 FA attached for the second half. Both of us shot in shutter priority mode with the speed set to 1/350 - 1/500 sec. I hope you enjoy this small selection: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370864/Lake-Eyre/index.html Initially I was concerned about the lack of contrast in the images - they were generally 'flat' with a limited tonal range. A simple levels adjustment made a world of difference. The only other significant post processing was in getting rid of reflections which mainly affected areas of sky. I addressed this by sampling the colour of a section of the sky and applying a colour gradient layer, masked so that it applied to the sky alone. This tended to hide the reflections quite well. Overall, I was happy with the results. There are a lot of 'misses' but enough keepers to make me feel that the exercise was worthwhile. For those who are interested - some background. Lake Eyre is usually a huge, dry salt lake in the South Australian outback. It's catchment covers about one sixth of the Australian continent but it only fills a few times per century. In most years any rainfall in the catchment is lost by evaporation or to groundwater well before it could reach the lake. In 1964 it was the location for a successful attempt on the world land speed record by Donald Campbell. Over the past couple of seasons there has been abnormally high rainfall in the catchment, so much so that the lake is approaching full capacity. It's an iconic place to both Aboriginal people and the wider population. Most Australians would like to visit but it's in a remote location which is only accessible on land via 4WD, so there is a growing interest in flights over the lake. The Painted Hills extend over an area of about 200 sq km and are low hills in contrasting colours of white, red, brown and orange. They are not accessible by road and can only be seen from the air. Cheers Brian ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Brian Walters Western Sydney Australia http://lyons-ryan.org/southernlight/ -- -- http://www.fastmail.fm - A fast, anti-spam email service. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
