Igor, others may have better suggestions, but in my experience you should:
Make sure that all your glass is as clean as possible.
Remove any filters, unless you're using B&W. It has been suggested that
using a haze filter will help, but I am not sure I agree.
Make sure the cabin window is clean and not misted up at all.
Don't rest the camera on your hand against the window - this just transmits
vibrations from the airframe.
If you're shooting JPG, maybe set the contrast higher than normal.
Bracket - the light at altitude can be very deceptive, and your subject may
be in much less contrasty light than it looks from the air.
HTH
Can't help you on the USM state of your image - it looks close to being
over-sharpened to my eye, but I have only looked at the JPG version.
John Coyle
Brisbane, Australia
----- Original Message -----
From: "Igor Roshchin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 9:32 AM
Subject: photography from an airplane and unsharp mask
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)?
How to avoid the flat look of the images (e.g. when taking
photos of the mountains below)?
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?
2. When do you use sharp/unsharp filters in the PS or
other software? (any hints on how to judge a reasonable level?)
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?
The full size JPEGS are ~2MB each are in this location:
http://www.komkon.org/~igor/PHOTOS/SanDiego/
Thank you,
Igor
