Casement Aerodrome Air Corps 90th Anniversary

lisatiffany

I was delighted when the Air Corp invited me out to the base for the 90th anniversary of the first state aircraft to land at the base. I'd been given about 1 weeks notice and was really looking forward to it, the same week I'd done 6 other shoots and learned a valuable lesson after it all. The night before I visited the base I'd been covering a gig with very fast moving performers in low light so naturally I was using a high ISO. I saved them into my user settings and then made a separate user setting pre-set for the base. In my bag the dial switched to the wrong setting and for the whole day of shooting it was going at a ridiculous 6400 ISO.

I never made that kind of mistake before and I was so run off my feet on the day that I didn't notice until I was leaving. Luckily I always shoot in RAW so most pictures could be salvaged but on top of that I left my filters in another camera bag so it was all bound to be one giant epic fail. I figured I might as well post a few of them with a link to the set because I was right up next to the runway when various aircraft and demonstrations by the irish rangers were being performed and its quite interesting to see. It's the only day I really want to re-do and if I hadn't have taken the huge workload I would have noticed the problem right away, so anyways here's a few. Some good some bad.


AgustaWestland AW-139 setting down to drop off some troops (I got covered in grass)


After the agusta-139 drops off a 105mm LT gun the troops put it to good use, should have worn ear plugs.


Irish Ranger Wing deploy for a HVT capture demonstration


Irish Air Corp Pilatus PC-9M rolls right past and the smell of jet fuel was intoxicating.


Not part of the demonstration - Gulfstream Aerospace G.1159C IV jet lands with Enda Kenny inside, I'm allowed to shoot the jet but not the man himself.


The cockpit of the CASA CN235-100MP Persuader, outside it looks as if a nuclear bomb is going off (too noisy) its a shot I plan on getting again with the right settings.


Army bomb disposal suit, weighed a ton and I shot the truck/interior/robot/etc too. The guy who actually had worn the suit had some interesting things to say about wearing it.

So that's it really the set has just over 200 shots of the various helicopters/planes/troops/equipment/etc but the noise made me almost delete them all. I was invited out again to try out some simulators and things so hopefully I'll get much better pictures next time.

5uspect

These are great! I spent nine months in the Air Corps as an undergrad Engineering student back in 2002. It's where I started taking photographs. So many memories...

lisatiffany

Thanks 5uspect I felt so bloody stupid when I saw the ISO had jumped so high and its probably the most important time RAW made a difference. It was the excitement too that kept me from checking my settings, I'd see something great then two minutes later see something else even better. I didn't expect to see the ordnance disposal guys that day, I pretty much ran to the robot when I saw the truck in the distance lol.

5uspect

TBH the noise isn't especially noticeable in the smaller images. When you view them large, I find the grain pleasing. It suits the military theme somewhat. Especially with all the grass being thrown up by the AW139.

There is a bit of odd haloing in some of the PC-9 shots:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacylisa/7562681068/sizes/m/in/photostream/
Though it doesn't look like it resulted from PP and more an effect of the canopy.

AnCatDubh

5uspect wrote: »

TBH the noise isn't especially noticeable in the smaller images. When you view them large, I find the grain pleasing. It suits the military theme somewhat. Especially with all the grass being thrown up by the AW139.

I agree, Noise is a minor irritation and if you go to print with any of them you'll find the printing process very forgiving when it comes to noise.