Remember the View

Sony A9ii Settings for airplane photography

October 21, 2020Joseph JenkinsLeave a comment

Here are the settings that I am using for my Sony A9ii for taking pictures of airplanes while moving through the air. The lens I use for this most days is the 100-400.

Aperture – F14 or below so that Phase Detect will still work for the auto focus
Raw or JPG – RAW, since the camera is so fast it can keep up with just about anything
Metering Mode – Spot so that I can capture the frame
Shutter Speed – Trying to get as low as 1/160 for prop planes for jets as fast as possible to catch them as they fly by.
Focus Mode – Continuous + Wide with Tracking, the camera auto focus is so fast that it catches the planes pretty quickly
Exposure Compensation – usually + 2/3 if it’s dark plane on a bright sunny day, this helps bring out the colors of the plane.
Frame Rate – Continuous Mid – I find that high fills the buffer and mid gets more than enough shots.
ISO – as low as possible, unless it’s an overcast day and then I will move it to Auto-Iso to maintain the shutter speed when needed.

F8F Bearcat Flyover

October 8, 2020Joseph JenkinsLeave a comment

Planes of Fame was up flying their F8F Bearcat that was just restored a few months ago. It’s a beautiful plane that looks great up in the air.

Setting up the WLANPi as a remote capture device for Mac OS over USB

October 2, 2020Joseph JenkinsLeave a comment

I wanted the ability to bring up Wireshark and then start taking packet captures with my wlanpi from my Mac. I didn’t want to always have to sacrifice wireless connection while I was doing it. Since most recent Macs lack a dedicated ethernet interface and I don’t always have a dongle around with me. My requirements were though to keep everything as stock as possible so that all I would have to do is hook the wlanpi up to my machine ensure that it was running and then be able to take wireless packet captures.

I copied over my public key to the wlanpi under the default address. I wanted it to be as simple as possible and why mess with the generic user: ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub wlanpi@wlanpi.local
By following and using this wonderful github project from Adrian Granados there are only a few modifications that need to be made.
When you are doing this part of his setup, the username will be wlanpi. $ sudo groupadd pcap
$ sudo usermod -a -G pcap wlanpi
$ sudo chgrp pcap /usr/sbin/tcpdump
$ sudo chmod 750 /usr/sbin/tcpdump
$ sudo setcap cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin=eip /usr/sbin/tcpdump
servername is going to be wlanpi.local
username is going to be wlanpi
This is the tricky part you need to specify your private key in the config, but you can’t browse to your .ssh directory by default. So when you click on the … and it brings up the directory window you will do a “Command + Shift +G” and then in the search field type ~/.ssh

Post Processing on C-47

September 18, 2020Joseph JenkinsLeave a comment

Finally finished some post processing on the C-47 that I shot a little while ago. I’ve been practicing quite a bit with Lightroom and I am pretty happy with how this shot has finished off.

P51 Flyover

September 11, 2020Joseph JenkinsLeave a comment

P-51 Warbirds flying over the Planes of Fame air museum. Out on a Saturday morning watching the plane fly over. Show with the A9II and the 100-400 with a 1.4 teleconverter.

75th Anniversary VJ Day Flyover

September 5, 2020September 24, 2020Joseph JenkinsLeave a comment

On 9/2/20 was the 75th Anniversary of the VJ Day Flyover. They flew the WW2 planes over Souther California. Since I was working from home and was able to take calls from my car I went to the Chino Airport to stake out a spot to catch the planes as they flew over. It took a while, but I was able to get a couple of shots, I really hoped they were going to land, but they just flew over on their way back home. I shot the planes with my Sony A9II and the 100-400 lens. F16 at 1/320 ISO 100

More Hummingbirds

September 3, 2020Joseph JenkinsLeave a comment

Continuing to get up close and personal with those that share my backyard with me. Don’t think I can get much closer without losing most of them. I had to manually focus on a stand-in flower to try and get the birds in focus. This time it worked out well and I was able to use a remote trigger to capture with the camera on a tripod.

Shooting Hummingbirds

August 28, 2020Joseph JenkinsLeave a comment

Some more Hummingbirds from the backyard. Got up close and personal with them.

Moon, Moon, Moon

August 19, 2020Joseph JenkinsLeave a comment

I was taking my son out for several nights in a row to try and find the Neowise Comet. Unfortunately he couldn’t find it, but I did manage to take some shots of the moon and had some fun being out with him. The best days to see the comet unfortunately ended up being some hazy days here in Eastvale, that made it really hard to see the comet in the night sky. I did manage to get this shot of the moon that I liked. I had my camera on the tripod using the 100-400 lens to take the shot.

Hummingbirds

August 13, 2020Joseph JenkinsLeave a comment

I hung a hummingbird feeder in my backyard and have been steadily moving it closer to my door so that I can shoot the little buddies that are flying around. The first shot is when I first hung the feeder and the next ones are as I moved it closer to my door. I like being able to sit behind my camera on a tripod and shoot the birds while working at my desk. Gives me something to do during the day and I am in boring meetings. I’ve found the hummingbirds come in the morning and in the afternoon. They are really fun to watch as they come to eat.