JFK 2/2/13 (Image Heavy)

A very nice day out with Fasil and my new T3i. It was very cold out with a high temperature only in the upper 20s and a breeze to boot. We started at North Woodmere Park:

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After this the clouds started rolling in and coupled with the cold we considered calling it a day. However shortly thereafter they changed to the 31s and we were off to Panera where we could wait in relative warmth in a car for something to come along.
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At about 4:00, we realized that they had changed runways back to the 22s, and we parted ways for the day. I headed off to the Mounds to grab the last bits of cloudy daylight, where there were a few specials heading inbound for me.

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A debadged Saudia Cargo 744, now operating for Evergreen.
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I didn't realize until I was editing that this was a somewhat rare A342.
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At this point the light really started to fade. Having the new camera out for the first time I really wanted to put it through its paces and see what I would get.
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By this point I was freezing through my layers, I was almost at the point of having maxed out the ability of the camera to get reliable low-light shots and I had a friend to meet so I headed off. Many thanks to Fasil for being a gracious host and for the wealth of knowledge that he passed along to me that day.

Nice catches and congrats on your new T3i, Ben !

Some of your shots are very underexposed, here is a quick edit I just did at my office to give you an idea, hope it helps for your future edits :)

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wow,great stuff,can't wait for my next stint at the 5 towns :)!!!

Thanks for the input, Kaz, and I appreciate the edits. I definately need to learn a bit more about editing. While it was a fairly dreary afternoon, I am actually very surprised at how much better they could look after editing, at least more than I did.

Ben great stuff, hopefully we will do this again before April showers arrive.

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Originally Posted by MSN007

Ben great stuff, hopefully we will do this again before April showers arrive.

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Absolutely, Fasil! With the warmer weather coming and it already being light later in the evening I am looking forward to it!

I played a little more with editing last night, and it seems that I needed to be far more aggressive with some of my edits:
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The editing app I was using on my iPad for these didn't like the beacons on this one. Once I made an adjustment, I could never get them to look like they did in the original unless I reverted to the original. I'll have to work on this one in Lightroom later.
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Now if I can just figure out what settings to use in camera to get closer to these results.

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Originally Posted by mldoc

Now if I can just figure out what settings to use in camera to get closer to these results.

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Learn how to use your histogram, that will help more than anything else

Much better, Ben !

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Originally Posted by Derf

Learn how to use your histogram, that will help more than anything else

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Thanks Fred! I am going to need to figure out how to use that on my camera. At first glance it seems like it is only available in playback or when using live view, though I'm sure I'm missing something. I'll RTFM tonight.

And thanks again, Kaz.

Nice catch on that former Saudi 744 I saw the tail from a distance while it was parked on the ramp and couldn't figure out what it was

The histogram shows you what your exposure looks like after the picture was taken. It will enable you to adjust for the next image to brighten or darken. You can not rely on the picture you see, During the day when your eyes are used to sunlight, the LCD will look darker. At night your eyes are going to see an image that was much brighter than the actual picture.

here is some good info
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...stograms.shtml

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Originally Posted by megatop412

Nice catch on that former Saudi 744 I saw the tail from a distance while it was parked on the ramp and couldn't figure out what it was

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Thanks Mega. I had to do a search for the tail number on that one to figure out what was going on. It looks like that aircraft was owned by Evergreen and operated for Saudia for the last couple of years. I guess with the 748Fs coming soon, Saudia doesn't need that one any more.

Thanks for the info and the link, Fred. I read through that page last night and will try using it this weekend.

I did not realize you just got your camera.... not bad for a first outing and look forward to seeing much more as your progress.

Well thanks. I was shooting with an S2IS prior to this, mostly since last summer. While that was a great camera and served me well for 6+ years, the difference between it and the T3i for airplanes has been incredible. Fortunately the S2 has a lot of manual controls and I had CHDK running most of the time to give a somewhat DSLR-like experience, so the learning curve hasn't been too bad. I appreciate your words of encouragement and look forward to sharing more soon.