Back from the Air Show trip. In short, it was great. Weather was absolutely perfect, and perfect for the sun tan (burn). I thought the show was good. That being said, some veterans of the show said it has been much better in the past. What do I know, I'm only a rookie from north of the Mason-Dixon line that was happy to be in the sun for a few days, eh? The Blue Angel program was a bit on the short side due to some show environmental issues but they did their bit, and it was fantastic.
Photographically speaking, I'll start listing the errors.
The biggest error I made was to change metering. I went from spot to center weighted. What was I thinking? Who knows, but this is another example of what I do best - take a working process and break it. Most of the military craft shots taken with the sky as the background are very dark. The flat surface of the aircraft played games with the camera sensors. Stealth, right? When I did chimp the pictures, the histograms looked OK, but in the sunlight I had trouble with the back display to see the images. However, all that means is a few more steps in the RAW processing. I was also purposely shooting at a -1 EV because of the sunlight and trying to reduce the (sun) burns in the image. So erroring on the dark side is much better than the alternative. That was the biggest blunder.
As to what went right, I chose prop shot speeds at 1/160 of a second. That worked real well. The only aircraft that didn't play well with that speed was the Osprey. The blades are pretty much frozen in those shots. That's still a little fast for taxiing shots, but stuff was happening fast. No time to make changes. Or sometimes, all day to make changes. just the way it flows. All in all, this worked out much better than the previous shots in Reno. Progress.
All of the shots were taken in MANUAL with AUTO ISO. I believe that worked well. From what I can tell, only one shot creeped above ISO 400. I did get a lot of practice moving the command dials. I will say I missed only a few shots because of this practice, I shot some jets with prop speeds. OK, but really didn't miss anything. Aperture settings were all over the map. Due to the bright light, I had to go higher than f/11 and I usually don't like to go there. You gotsta do what you gotsta do.
Aside from the air show, I now have many pelican photos. We spent some time in the Charleston port. Along with the pelicans, there were lots of shrimp boats and shrimp boats taking a day off from the shrimping business and doing Sunday duty as a party boat. Scary to think some of those people might be driving home. Looked like pirate fun.
One of the non-advertised gems my host had up his sleeve was the Stono Church. This building is completely run down, in an old south way. However in the middle of the one room, there is an old piano that is passing in time away. And on this piano are a number of maybe fake flowers? This is the type of photo opportunity I see that comes along to others in my photo club, but not me. Until now. Hope I didn't blow it.
I spent some time in a southern wildlife area refuge. Roots, newts and a few snakes. I don't see this type of scenery locally, I was just like a kid at Christmas. I don't think I embarrassed my host. Much.
I had worked on a number of these images last week while traveling with my laptop. However. When I finally got back to viewing these on the home PC, it just wasn't the same. So much of the work done on the road will have to be re-done here.
Great trip and time. Already planning the 2020 version. Looks like the Charleston AB Air Show is next April. Getting that time cleared on my calendar. I'll be ready for some warmth, again.
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