Tag Archives: USN

The Constellation in the Inner Harbor

The USS Constellation is the last sail powered warship built for the US Navy. She is now preserved in the harbor in Baltimore. I saw her a few times from a distance while I was in Baltimore but I didn’t get a chance to take a shot until I was walking back from a reception. By that time it was dark and, since I only had my phone with me, that had to suffice. The phone on the camera has a wide angle lens so, even though we were quite close, the ship is a little small in the original shot. However, she still looks pretty impressive. I imagine she would have looked even better when under sail!

Blue Angels at Oceana (And High ISO)

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I have only been to the Oceana show once. I headed down there with my friends Ben and Simon. We weren’t terribly lucky with the weather. There was flying during the show but things were overcast and deteriorated as the show went on. The finale of the show was, naturally for a big Navy base, the Blue Angels. I was shooting with a 1D Mk IIN in those days and that was a camera that was not happy at high ISO settings.

The problem was, the light was not good and the ISO needed to be cranked up a bit. Amusingly, if you were shooting today, the ISO levels would not be anything that caused concern. Current cameras can shoot at ISO levels without any noise levels that would have been unthinkable back then. However, I did learn something very important with this shoot. The shot above is one that I got as one of the solo jets got airborne. I used it as a test for processing.

I processed two versions of the image, one with a lot of noise reduction dialed in and one with everything zeroed out. I think combined them in one Photoshop image and used a layer mask to show one version in one half of the image and the other for the second half. When I viewed the final image on the screen, the noise in one half was awfully apparent. It was a clear problem. However, I then printed the image. When I did so, things were very different. If you looked closely, you could see a little difference. However, when you looked from normal viewing distances, there was no obvious difference between the two.

My takeaway from this is that viewing images on screens has really affected our approach to images. We get very fixated on the finest detail while the image as a whole is something we forget. We print less and less these days and the screen is a harsh tool for viewing.

Get Those Shock Waves Showing

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The Fleet Week air show in San Francisco is wrapped up by the Blue Angels. The sneak passes made by the pair are an opportunity to try and get something interesting. Since they display over the bay and the city is known for having high relative humidity, I am always hoping to get some good vapor shots. This time out, that wasn’t to be. The air seemed to be pretty dry and there was not a lot of vapor on show. However, the fast pass from left to right takes the jet in front of the hills and Alcatraz which provides some detail to show up the distortion caused by the shock-waves. The large number of boats and associated masts meant a clean shot was tricky but I got a couple I was pleased with.

Hello Surprise Hornets

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SFO might get the occasional military movement but it is primarily civil traffic you see there. Roger and I were chatting when we noticed something small on the approach. Initially I assumed a business jet but then the shape became clearer and it was a Super Hornet. In fact, there were two with the second close in trail. From our location they were a bit far out but still an interesting pair of visitors to photograph.

Seahawk on Display

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The visitor that came the longest distance for Heli Fest is probably the MH-60S that the US Navy sent from North Island NAS down on Coronado Island near San Diego. They had needed one fuel stop to get there with a transit of about four hours each way. As with all of the military assets on show, they got a lot of attention from the visitors. The aircraft was open for anyone to check out and the kids certainly seemed interested. Since they had come so far, they were not just having a day visit. They had arrived the day before and were not heading back until the following day. Consequently, while everyone else was departing, they were locking up the helicopter for an overnight stop.

Vampires Out in Daylight

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Tucson International is a place I was expecting to shoot F-16s of various nations. I had not expected to see any Super Hornets. However, the Navy had other plans. A couple of VX-9 Vampires jets were detached and carrying out missions with some of the based test aircraft. One of them was the color jet too! This was a very pleasant surprise. They took off in the morning for a mission and we got to see them head off. They returned ahead of my expectations and I wasn’t in the right place to get them on approach. Even so, a great addition to the day. I was flying home later that day and, while looking out of the window at the gate, they taxied by again so I guess they were getting a lot of flying in.

The Camera Might See But Autofocus Doesn’t

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And I could barely see much myself! We were on the ramp at Moffett Field for the arrival of Solar Impulse. There was some time to wait while we were out there. As I looked around, I thought I could see something parked further down the ramp. There was very little light but there appeared to be some aircraft. I figured it was worth a look given that I had a tripod.

In the days of film shooting, I couldn’t trust the camera metering for long exposures. Reciprocity failure was part of the issue but the cameras were a lot less advanced in those days. In this case I trusted the camera for the first shot and it worked out really well. Sadly, there was nothing to focus on so I made my best forts at focusing on what was visible and it was some background lights. Sadly, they were too far away to get focus on the aircraft. The sensor was able to gather the feeble light without any problem though.

It turns out that there was a pair of Navy E/A-18G Growlers sitting on the ramp. Leave the camera to it and you get a reasonable exposure. When I saw the shot appear on the screen, I was quite amazed. I was looking at the jets and I could barely make anything out. The camera was able to see the whole thing – just out of focus based on my inability to focus it properly.

Parade of Ships

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I have mentioned the LCS ship that was part of the Parade of Ships for Fleet Week. It was one of several warships to take part in the parade. Most were US Navy ships but there was also a Coast Guard ship and a visitor from the Royal Canadian Navy. They entered the bay under the Golden Gate Bridge before parading in front of the spectators arrayed along the shore and in the boats out on the water. The first ship was led by a fire boat that sprayed water from its cannons in greeting.

These pictures are a sample of the different ships that were on parade. Another warship was part of Fleet Week but it remained tied up during the parade which was a shame as I would liked to have seen it. You could tour it if you wanted but I had other plans that meant that wouldn’t work out.

USS Coronado LCS

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As a small boy, my Gran would take me to Portsmouth each August for Navy Day. We would spend a day walking around the dockyard and getting on to various warships to see what they were like. This was a pretty big event and, in those days, the number of ships in port for those days is probably more than the Royal Navy has in total today. The result of this was an interest in an early day with warships. Growing up by the water meant that ships of all types were a regular feature of life.

Warship design underwent quite a transition. Traditionally, warships had been slender designs that achieved speed and supposedly provided the most stable ride. However, this was not an approach that was universally agreed and shorter broader designs started to gain favor. The Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates were one of the first signs that Navy’s were taking new configurations seriously.

The US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program has gone a stage further with one of the builders. There are two LCS designs in production and one of them has a narrow center hull and two additional outboard hulls further aft. This trimaran configuration provides slender hulls but with a lot of stability and the space for a large deck. One of the LCS ships was in San Francisco for Fleet Week and took part in the Parade of Ships.

USS Coronado (LCS-4) was the ship on display. She is the second of the General Dynamics – Bath Iron Works ships to be commissioned and entered service in 2014. As she entered the bay under the bridge she turned towards to city and you could get a good view (albeit at some distance) of the unusual hull shape. As she got closer, the view was more abeam the ship but you could still see the layout of the armaments. As she headed away, a view of the stern hinted at the hull layout but really emphasized the width of the deck.

The US Navy is currently reconsidering its needs and is looking for a frigate that is more heavily armed than the LCS designs but makes as much use of the hull designs as possible. We shall see how that all works out. In the meantime, this is one of the more unusual shapes afloat. The Zumwalt destroyer is even more unusual so I shall have to try and see that at some point too.

Sneak Pass

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I have seen a large number of displays by the Blue Angels over the years. Their display is a good one generally (although the ground portion is a little time consuming in my opinion). The sequence does not vary much from year to year but it works well enough so that is probably no big surprise. One of the fun parts is the sneak passes. The four ship head off in one direction to distract you and a solo jet streaks in from the left at low level and high speed. This catches a lot of people by surprise.

Just as everyone is getting over this, the other solo jet does something similar from crowd rear to make you all jump again. The displays that are held over water provide an added option for the first sneak pass. With no obstacles, the aircraft can end up very close to the water. This makes things look even more impressive. Also, the high speeds can result in some impressive vapor formations in the shock waves.

The Fleet Week display on the Friday had great weather conditions but, surprisingly for the Bay Area, the humidity levels were not terribly high. Consequently, while the sneak pass had its usual surprise impact, it did not result in any vapor on the jet. The upside of this was that the optical distortion caused by the shock waves was visible in some shots when a reasonable amount of background was included. Not what I was aiming for but not a bad alternative.