From: Igor Roshchin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: photography from an airplane and unsharp mask
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 19:32:28 -0400 (EDT)
Hello!
I have two questions that are somewhat related to each other.
1. Photography from a commercial airplane.
What suggestions do you have for taking pictures from a
commercial airplane?
How to make them sharper and overcome some type of cast
that is often seen in the day-time images of this kind (not clouds
yet, but enough to decrease he overall contrast)?
The problem is you're generally shooting through double panes. The interior
pane is plexiglass or something like it. Very prone to scratches, thereby
reducing contrast. When you're shooting very much downwards as in the city
shots you're shooting through the part of the panes that have more curvature
relative to to the perpendicular, straight out the window view. That tends
to distort, warp, and I'm guessing... reduce the contrast. I can see the
image degrade with my naked eye when I look anywhere other than almost
straight out. So, unfortunately it'll likely be hard to get really good
images when close to the ground, unless the plane is banking heavily and you
can shoot straight out the center of the window.
How to avoid the flat look of the images (e.g. when taking
photos of the mountains below)?
Same as above. always try to shoot out the center of the winow, not down
through the window.
I remember somebody's advise that one shouldn't use polarizers
while shooting through airplane windows, but don't remember why.
Can someone clarify this?
http://www.weather-photography.com/techniques.php?cat=general&page=filters
2. When do you use sharp/unsharp filters in the PS or
other software? (any hints on how to judge a reasonable level?)
Almost every shot requires some degree of USM. It's very subjective. If
your photo starts to appear granular or you can see halos on edges that
weren't there before, you've likely overdone the USM. Not enough is usually
better than too much.
As an example, here is my photo of San Diego downtown taken from the plane.
It is not a photo for presentation, just something that I am
practicing on, and I am not happy with it.
I wonder what else can be done to improve it.
"original" photo:
http://www.komkon.org/~igor/PHOTOS/SanDiego/IMGP2417-2sm.jpg
and the one after "unsharpen mask" applied in PS:
http://www.komkon.org/~igor/PHOTOS/SanDiego/IMGP2417-2sharpsm.jpg
In your opinion, is this image oversharpened?
Not in my opinion. It enhances the small detail such as windows in the
buildings. It helps with thisimage becases it's reduced contrast to begin
with and USM works by increasing edge contrast. It soes not look
oversharpened.
The full size JPEGS are ~2MB each are in this location:
http://www.komkon.org/~igor/PHOTOS/SanDiego/
Thank you,
Igor
I'm sure the shots taken from a small hired plane with an open window would
be far superior to those taken from a commercial airliner. But most of don't
have that kind of cash laying around.
Tom C.
