for those who snub the 6D AF...

[michi]

Sorry, lost track of who was who in this thread.

I fly for a living, so I get a fair amount of air to air shot opportunities too.  No, not a master of sharpening, but I'm as good as most of us who have worked with digital photography since the digital days started.

I just don't get why we keep discussing this.  It's impossible to tell if the picture is tack sharp, due to the window distortion.  Sure, as a screensaver this might look great if the plane is small and in the corner of the shot.  But again, cropped in, it's pointless to use it as a example of how well a camera focuses.

And yeah, I think I could reproduce a shot like that, even with my 5DII.  It's a matter of knowing your equipment.

[wellfedCanuck]

I just don't get why we keep discussing this. 

I'm the OP, and frankly, I'm sorry I posted the shot. It seems that CarlTN has a point about people not completely reading messages or conversely reading too much into a post. Once again- it was just me- an untalented, unsophisticated, amateur photographer celebrating the fact that the camera could do something I wasn't expecting it to be able to do based upon my previous experience with another Canon DSLR.

Holy Cow. Let it go.

[CarlTN]

I'd like to see some of your air to air shots.  Here is a heavily cropped Pilatus from my 50D and 70-200 f/4 (non IS), through C 172 side window glass (I open it for my paying work).  The glass has a terrible green tint that I tried to "correct" but there's very little that can be done.

And let's not judge me too harshly here, this is an example of my least sharp, least pretty work.  It's just a SNAPSHOT.  After all, one of my (ground) landscapes was published in Outdoor Photographer, March 2012.  (I hate to beat that with a dead horse, but so far it's my only claim to fame...I need that in order to go on with my life, ok?...hahaha.  I would give the link to it, but then it would be nitpicked to death.  Anyone could probably find it if they looked hard enough.  Not that it's worth all that much effort.)

I don't know if this is cropped enough for your liking, or to even be a good screen saver on a flip-phone's .7 inch front screen or not, but it might be!  I scaled it up 500% in photoshop, used bicubic (but not "bicubic softer"), added some NR and sharpened details to 86% (within the NR filter, didn't add any extra sharpening in PS...had actually reduced it in ACR, but boosted the detail slider in ACR prior to opening in PS). 

Hey, the plane was probably 5 to 7 miles away...it's not remotely "tack sharp", but you can see the winglets, side windows, wing flap rail guides, and it did freeze the propellor...which has 4 big blades.  Keep in mind this plane is about 50 feet long...so yea, it's not close to us at all.  They are quite cool, in my opinion.  The Swiss know how to do a few things very well, don't they?

If you google this airplane, you'll see a shot of it flying over the Golden Gate bridge.  I must say, that photographer sucks!  The green cargo ship in the water below, is quite fugly...totally ruins the shot.  They could have gone off and shot some other sites, then come back after the ship passed.  It would have taken an extra 5 minutes, not that big of a deal.  Even I am more professional than that!   

Shot stats: f/4.5, 1/6400, ISO 320, 200mm...Mach 25 closure (Joking!)

[CarlTN]

Wellfed, relax...i've enjoyed this thread immensely...I liked your shot, and want you to shoot more.  Much of my work is aerial photography, but not usually "air to air"...obviously!

My request, however, would be to shoot an airliner as it is first going full throttle on the runway at takeoff, on a very rainy day.  I've not seen airplanes much more awesome, than when they are blowing a cloud of water hundreds of feet backward.  I've yet to take any snaps of that, though.  I don't travel that much on airliners...I want to!

Here is the full size, uncropped version...but scaled down to 1300 x 867 pixels.  Looks a lot sharper here, but tiny.  Yes there's a lot of color and other noise in this shot.  I forget how I played with this version...I was trying to heavily cut the green tint of the window...and also to try to see through the haze to the mountains on the lower right that are about 80 miles distant. 

Straight out of the camera, you basically couldn't see the ground on the right side of the shot at all.

[CarlTN]

Your Exif data shows f/5, 1/1000, ISO 100, 105mm.  You can clearly see the motion blur on the front of the wings and horizontal stabilizer (especially via my second version, cropped and scaled up a bit over 200%).  I say 70% of the sharpness “loss” of this shot, is that you needed to peg your shutter speed at 1/4000, and close the lens to f/6.3 (given my experience with that lens, on a 1D Mk4).  This would have required ISO 640 or so, which would have been fine.  The other 30% of sharpness loss, is the glass of your windshield, and a slight lack of the lens’ sharpness.  It’s not a fault of the AF, in my opinion…although it’s possible it might need some tweaking in AFMA?  I have no idea.   Not sure if you were in servo AF mode or not, either…that can be a big factor…can help at times, other times not.  I probably would have multi-half-pressed the shutter in single shot AF as the plane got close, then held it half pressed til it got close enough.  Center point only, of course…then recompose as necessary as you are panning, etc.

You also likey didn’t pan with the plane quite fast enough as it passed…not easy to do, I know.  Also, if you left image stabilization on (you probably did not)…that would have been a big no-no with this lens…as it has no panning mode.  I think the image would have been a lot more blurred if it had been left on.  If it was on, then you must have done little or no panning.  I can only guess.

I converted this jpg to a DNG, so I could first open in ACR, then crop it farther, then play with it.  I added 33 on the sharpening slider with .5 pixel radius, then pushed to 92 on the detail slider.  I then saved changes, and opened the image in Photoshop.  Then I took a 10 hour nap after my daily afternoon romp with a room full of cheerleaders (hey somebody laugh!)…nah I did all this in a few minutes.
 
In PS, for the second image, I scaled it up 2.2x in “bilinear”, performed no other changes, saved as jpg.  This should illustrate my point about the motion blur (wing and stabi leading edges…even the line around the door on the side).  At a closure speed of approximately 1200 mph…you need more than 1/1000/sec shutter speed.  Frankly, I’m surprised it’s not any more blurred than it is!  Obviously you panned somewhat.  MORE THAN A DECENT JOB for an admitted “amateur”.

Sharpening artifacts around the high contrast edges as metal meets sky?  Yes, but it’s not all that bothersome.  Look good with this amount of crop on a billboard the size of a 2 mile runway?  Sure, why not…:P !!! 

[CarlTN]

Here they are:

[CarlTN]

220% scaled up and further cropped, to show motion blur.

[wellfedCanuck]

Thanks, Carl. Your skills are an order of magnitude above mine. 

Yes, I made a lot of the mistakes you mentioned, but- about panning- there really isn't time or room for that for an airplane traveling along a reciprocal track. If ATC mentions the traffic (more for interest, since separation is adequate if everyone's doing what they're supposed to be doing)- you won't actually see the aircraft until he's well inside 10 miles. That's less than 40 seconds from when he starts out as a hazy dot until he disappears over (or under) your windscreen. It's only the last 2 or 3 seconds that he's big enough in your field of view to produce a useable photo. You aim, you shoot, sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn't.

Crossing traffic is easier as is the organized track system over the Atlantic where everyone's stacked up and going in the same direction. (But I haven't flown either big ocean since before digital cameras were available to the masses.)

[michi]

I just don't get why we keep discussing this. 

I'm the OP, and frankly, I'm sorry I posted the shot.

Holy Cow. Let it go.

Don't be sorry.  I posted my opinion, then people argued with me.  You're not really involved.  In my first post I said its a cool shot, just not proof of how autofocus works.  I think it's you who is over reacting now.  Just watch and read and see what is being discussed.

[michi]

Here some shots.  Some of them taken with point and shoots.

[michi]

And I ran into this one.  Similar to the original shot posted.  Came from above, distorted by the cockpit window.  The back part looks like it could be motion blur, but as is apparent by the front of the plane, it's just distortion.

[wellfedCanuck]

Here some shots.  Some of them taken with point and shoots.

Same direction of flight, NAT tracks?

[michi]

Some. I think a few were crossing.

[wellfedCanuck]

As you know, much easier than opposite-direction traffic.

My last overseas position was B744F, last flight 2 weeks after 911, so still shooting film. That'd be a perfect airplane for north atlantic shots today since we cruised it at .86 and eventually passed everyone except Concorde and other 400s... Should be back overseas next year on the 787, this time with a DSLR. 

[CarlTN]

Holy crap, michi and canuck, this is too cool.  Michi, I like those! 

Thanks Canuck...to some on here apparently I am just an ignorant moron.  I'm just waiting for the "poor syntax" attacks to start, hahaha.

Btw, I have loads of other airplane shots, mostly from the ground...some are model planes.  Will also try to find one of a helicopter from above taken with the little P7000.  I've been working on some bird snapshots to post in my "sigma lens for birding" thread.

And again please, somebody take shots of jets taking off in the rain...I guess I'll have to do it sometime.  It means driving to atlanta and standing there in the rain at the fence...if that's even possible anymore, I haven't been to that area of the airport since before 9/11.

Ahh the Concorde...we didn't know what we were going to lose out on till they retired them all.

The 787 looks freaky the way its wings flex upward!  Imagine they were built by the lowest bidder, and it would be even more scary!