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Plane Spotting


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This was my second attempt, using an A7m2 and SEL 70-200. I'm still experimenting with settings, the results from today were pretty good, so this is what I used:

 

  1. Shutter set to 1/250 (or higher) -  the planes are moving fast, even if it does not seem so, from my first attempt I had too many shots which were blurred.
  2. Auto ISO from 100 to 1600 - the camera was preferring ISO 100, and setting aperture to around f6, perhaps next time I will fix the Aperture and ISO at values which will let the shutter hover around 1/400.
  3. AF-C with Zone Focus- apparently this will use the Phase Detect pixels, most of the time it did, however at the end of the time, with a little more sun, I think the camera switched to Contrast Detect ... which means only one of the 9 squares was in focus, not necessarily the one I wanted. When that starts happening it might be an idea to switch to one of the movable squares because otherwise the wrong parts of the Plane are in focus.
  4. Continuous Shooting, low speed - this was OK, last time I used high speed and ended up with lots of almost identical photos to delete. Generally I only took one shot, at the point where I had a nice composition.
  5. Focus Tracking was OFF - what I found after the first attempt was that the camera would often track a part of the aircraft, perhaps not the part you want, and you end up with out of focus aircraft. The Zone Focus seemed to work.

The camera often lost focus after the first shot, perhaps I was releasing the shutter which cancels out the AF-C, and it did take a second or two to get focus again. I don't think the AF can really cope with fast moving objects that well. The dude with the DSLR did not seem to have any problems firing away ... his shutter was also quieter     :lol:  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Yes, I think so, all of the above are slightly cropped for compositional reasons only.

 

The only place where a longer lens would be helpful is getting shots of planes the moment they touch down and as they move around the terminal area. So sure, a 70-400 might be better, but actually if its not your life's work ... then 70-200 is more than enough.

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I've tried using the A7II with the Sony 70-300mm G SSM lens + adapter, at Duxford. I gave up in the end. Lots of missed shots waiting for the camera to do it's thing, it's to slow for action photography, more blurred/missed shots than I normally get and with an adapter, the batteries last no where near as long as they do without the adapter. A great camera for static though but I've gone back to my trusty A77II for the action shots. :D

 

Brian

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Thanks for the nice images and the detailed description.

 

There're two things I'd like to ask:

 

1) Do you really have oof issues with a 200/f4 at that distance? I never had such, even with close aircraft at 200/f2.8. Ok, it was a DSLR. ;-) But I don't think that matters much.

 

2) When you turn the zoom ring, does it "reset" the focus? I had a similar issue with an Olympus E-M5 II. Every time I zoomed in or out the focus was lost and it had to start over again causing a 1-2 seconds delay. Very similar to what you described after pressing the shutter.

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

Gesendet von iPad mit Tapatalk

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Hi,

 

On point 1: yes, keep in mind that DOF is "wide" but actual sharp focus is still reasonably short given the size of the subject. So it makes a difference where the camera actually focuses which is where I try to get the right AF mode to use. I don't think the AF copes too well with subjects at a distance of 500 meters, I think it prefers subjects at 10 meters or so ... 

 

The two shots below, one is at f5 the other f10, taken with these settings - I think they are both great (but the versions here loose all detail so I will put the originals on 500px)

 

https://500px.com/photo/138652213/lufthansa-heavy-by-tim-rule

https://500px.com/photo/138652211/lufthansa-heavy-by-tim-rule

 

You can see that the tail of the A380 is a little out of focus (at f5) compared to the B747 (at f10). So at f4, imagine the the AF Locking focus is on the tail ... and then the front of the airplane is just a little soft.

 

On point 2: Focus is fine even when changing the zoom. Simply use Zone with AF-C and the camera will follow the target quite well even as the planes pass directly over head. The only problem I had was after taking a shot, and half releasing the shutter, the focus was lost for a moment while the camera starting looking for something to take a photo of at 10 meters     :D  ...  if it had half a brain it would start looking at the last AF lock distance which was 500 meters.

 

Perhaps turning on the "Pre-Focus" would help in that case? Something to try next time.

 

 

 

With a DSLR these problems don't exist, it seems ...    :lol:

 

 

 

 

 

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Here are another two shots, both at 200mm. You can see the 200mm is quite enough, but for aircraft at the terminal buildings, and landing, 400mm is going to be useful - in that case the aircraft is around 700mm away, and the terminal 1200m.

 

 

 

 

 

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Hi,

 

thanks for the 

concerning focus, yes, just a bit visible and consistent (A380's tail and end of right wing). But you can still identify the static dischargers, so it's not really an issue imho. ;-)

 

I'm surprised that 1/250s works so well here. Usually I have to take 1/400s maximum and better <= 1/1000s was ideal. Otherwise parts of the aircraft might look blurred, similar to oof. My best guess is movement of camera and lens while shooting.

 

Currently the longest lens I own is an 85mm. Since it's a portrait lens I have to fight with corner sharpness wide open but that's ok. Here're some images taken at f/2 or f/1.8. Depth of field doesn't seem to be a big issue, it's just softer in the corners. The aircraft were closer than in your images, that's why I asked about problems with depth of field at f/4 and a larger distance.

 

https://500px.com/photo/138699603/aircraft-by-pflapf

https://500px.com/photo/138699601/aircraft-by-pflapf

https://500px.com/photo/138699599/aircraft-by-pflapf

 

Happy to see that the 70-200/4 is reasonably good in the corners wide open. I'm hoping for Sony to announce many f/2.8 FE lenses this year and the f/4 prices to drop massively. :-)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Where I live we don't see big planes like these so I enjoyed looking at the shots you have posted.

I really like them all and I hope you keep doing this branch of photography.

There are many different named planes out there and they might be the same make but the pain job makes them so different.

Thanks for letting me see these.

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  • 1 month later...

I've been using the 70-200 for a while now and I'm rather unhappy with the performance on my A7R2. Shooting with f/8 and a shutter between 1/500s and 1/4000s, I noticed some issues which I never saw before on any other lens in the Canon or Sony world:

 

1) long initial delay before OSS (mode 2) worked, something like 1 second or more. Basically I always lost at least the first shot. The location didn't allow to see the planes as they approach, just from the side, 20m to 30m above the ground.

 

2) motion blur even at 1/2000s. Maybe the shutter is moving slower than a Canon shutter? Enabling / Disabling EFCS didn't make any difference.

 

3) a strange effect which looks like hot air (though it is not). Here's the image:

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The upper 2/3s of the image are really looking bad, here's a 100% crop:

The lower part is fine:

The image was shot at f/5.6, 1/500s, ISO 125. The blue plane was taxiing very slowly. It can't be hot air because the white pole in the front is ok in the lower part and disturbed in the upper part of the image. Furthermore the next image, 1 second later, is perfectly fine.

 

I must admit that I never disabled OSS. On Canon (5DM3, 70-200 2.8 II) I never had to and with a Batis 85 I can only see slight traces of issue 2.

 

Did anyone notice similar problems?

 

Thanks!

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Could it be that you focus point is changing between shots, so in some cases the DOF is not covering the entire frame? There is quite some difference between those red generators and the TUI Jet.

 

Its also possible that it is hot air because the sun seems to be shining on the tarmac around the pole, and that would impact the objects behind the tarmac much more than those in front of it (like the pole).

 

 

It does look more like hot air. There is a lot of tarmac between the foreground and background.

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focus did not change between the images as far as i can say. i used the center spot only and did not re-focus.

i'd totally agree with hot air, nevertheless the next image is fine. usually hot air doesn't disappear suddenly. also the pole itself is disturbed in the upper part. i took some photos of planes taxiing away from me onto the runway.  you can easily spot the hot exhaust from the turbines and the apu while the rest of the image is ok.

this day i took about 250 photos and at least 1/3 were unusable due to this issue. i was wondering if this is as well an OSS issue.

anyway i'll send the lens back to amazon and get a replacement. maybe there is something wrong with it.

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Actually it looks more like jet blast, and that would disappear suddenly. Do you recall if there were any jets to the right or left of your shot?

 

You have to consider what OSS 2 mode is doing, and perhaps mode 1 would have been a better choice for that scenario you mentioned.

 

Do you have samples of your motion blur at 1/2000s?

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good point, i'll check if i can find any aircraft on the previous images.

re oss mode 2, i already noticed that oss in this lens is inferior to any canon is i saw before. which is not great for a tele lens.

nevertheless i'd expect that at 1/500s oss mode wouldn't matter.

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