Many thanks for the overwhelming number of positive reactions about my photos. It's nice to see that you are as pleased with them as I am.
To answer some of the questions:
This report was shot in April 2008, and was kept quiet for publication purposes. The photos were taken during the Polish NATO Air Policing mission called Orlik II. All air-to-air photos were shot from the side door and load ramp of a transport aircraft. Nope, no MiG-29 or L-39, unfortunately........ Too bad, although I'm very happy with these results too. Below is a photo of me at work.
To show you some of the fun we had, I have attached a shot of the L-39 target aircraft. After we had finished with the MiG-29's it came by to have it's picture taken, and it came in CLOSE ! What you see below is the uncropped version of my photo, taken with 25mm on my EOS-1D Mark II (1.3x magnification factor), which effectively makes it a 32,5mm lens. To shoot the same shot with a EOS-40D (1.6x crop factor), you would need a 20mm lens !
As I love mathematics:
From tip to tip the L-39 measures 1803 pixels wide on my 3504 pixel sensor. The span of a L-39ZA is 9,46m, and length is 12,13m. Max span (anti collision lights on tip tanks) is at 5,76 meter behind the tip of the nose. As I used a lens with a 25mm focal length on a 28,7mm wide sensor, a simple calculation tells me....
25mm focal length x 28,7mm sensor = distance x 9,46m span
The distance between my camera sensor and maximum span is 8,24m, while maximum span is located 5,76 meter behind the tip of the nose...... This puts the tip of the nose at 2,48 meter away from my camera, but as it's an agled shot of about 45° it's fair to say that THE FLYING L-39 IS ONLY 3,5 METER AWAY FROM MY FACE !!!
And this is what it looked like with 17mm !!!!!!!!
Who says it's not possible to have fun at work ?
Cheers,
Iwan
