This guy landed at Half Moon Bay while we were there. I have to admit I thought I was taking pictures for the accident investigation at first. However, he maintained this pose all along the runway until he turned off and apparently had done it earlier. I guess he had a lot of elevator authority. However, whether it is a good idea is a very different question.
There are some shots that it is just hard to get. They are possible but it depends on what you have available. One idea that I have been trying to come up with a solution for is getting good shots of airliners as they lower their gear. The sequence for lowering the gear is pretty cool and the outline of the plane when it has flaps deployed but no gear is of interest to me too. However, to get a shot like that, you need to be high up further out on the approach. Unless you are in another aircraft, that is tricky to do.
From the normal locations on the ground, the aircraft is just too far away to get a decent shot. Not only is it in the distance and, therefore, small but you also have to cope with atmospheric disturbances like heat haze and dust in the air. It doesn’t make for a compelling shot! Instead, I decided to try something different. I would shoot the sequence of shots of the approach and then animate them. This would mean that the reduced quality of an individual shot would be lost as the sequence would require a certain amount of motion blur anyway.
What I didn’t realize until I tried this on an A380 was that this jet has an unusual gear sequence. I was looking at trying a 747 or an A380 since they are large and have interesting wing configurations when approaching to land. As it turns out, the A380 lowers the outer two gear legs first before the two center body legs come down. I had not appreciated this before trying this shot. Animating the sequence really put the computer under some pressure. Creating a file with over 100 layers and then adjusting each layer to align properly took some time and really made the machine work hard. Ultimately, I got the sequence you can see above.
Hyper lapse is not something I have tried a lot of but I have done a little experimentation. For those who are expert at it, my description might be a bit simplistic but it is basically a time lapse when the camera doesn’t stay still and the movement through a scene is accelerated. I had a go at this out of a window of a Southwest flight that was approaching Phoenix. Keeping the camera still and in the same reference to the aircraft is a little tricky but the nice thing about time lapse shooting is that small movements get blurred out quite quickly.
I liked the idea of the rapid passing of the scenery, the rapidity of the maneuvers and the speedy deployment of the flaps showing up. I decided to let it run until we were back at the gate. As my friend Paul said, “Don’t all Southwest flights taxi at that speed?”
Came across this video of a rather interesting 777 landing. I assume it is genuine and not some happy bit of video creation by someone. Anyway, thought I would share it with those that haven’t seen it before.