Mach Loop; C17A Globemaster and F15C Eagles

Craig_85

Craig_85

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Craig
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Well first time in the Mach Loop for a long time and first time pointing a camera at something moving in well over a year. A good friend of mine knows Bart, the C17 pilot personally and asked if I could go along to get some shots for him, couldn't quite believe it was happening until it came out of the Bwlch pass tipped over!

1.
C17A 92-3292 Globemaster III Low Level Mach Loop by Craig Hollis, on Flickr

2.
C17A 92-3292 Globemaster III Low Level Mach Loop by Craig Hollis, on Flickr

3.
C17A 92-3292 Globemaster III Low Level Mach Loop by Craig Hollis, on Flickr

4.
C17A 92-3292 Globemaster III Low Level Mach Loop by Craig Hollis, on Flickr

5.
84-0001 F15C by Craig Hollis, on Flickr

6.
F15C 84-0001 Cad East by Craig Hollis, on Flickr
 
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What a timely post, I was driving along the A303 on Friday and saw a huge military plane landing at Yeovilton and wondered what it was - you've ID'd it with the C17A in your photos. It was massive!
 
Thanks guys, and yes @Nawty it was this actual airframe.

I imagine anyone driving along the roads of North Wales got a shock too.
 
Great set and oh boy the C17 is a monster of an aircraft :)
 
Craig-85.

Can I ask what camer/lens/iso/other setting you were using?

I was at Cad west about 3 weeks back and got mixed results.

Great shots btw.
 
Cracking set of images. Never been myself but that view point to get no 8 must be amazing!
Graham.
 
Amazing images, seeing a photo of such a big aircraft pretty much level and head-on is so unusual.

We get C-17s circling very low over our house quite often on clear still nights (I live just down the road from Keevil Airfield in Wiltshire), they rattle the doorframes and windows and we give up trying to watch TV when they arrive! It's always dark though so I've never actually seen one properly.
 
Stunning shots. The Mach-loop is a place i would love to go to. One day...
 
Thanks guys.

soupdragon said:
Craig-85.

Can I ask what camer/lens/iso/other setting you were using?

I was at Cad west about 3 weeks back and got mixed results.

Great shots btw.
Click to expand...

Hi Soupdragon, You have seen the EXIF now, something with the loop with the changing backdrops etc is the meter does get tricked, and what may be the correct amount of compensation against sky/land will be incorrect against shaded rock face. Sometimes my settings are a stop wrong compared to absolutely ideal and manual is not the answer. It really is a case of taking some test shots and checking your histogram, then when something comes through even if you are not overly interested in it, blast off a whole sequence of shots on it and check your histogram all the way through the sequence. (Whilst keeping an eye on the horizon in case something decent appears!) Then if you have overexposed any of them adjust your compensation to suit that brightest one which is not recoverable.

At the end of the day the settings are a compromise, know the highest ISO you are prepared to shoot with, the widest aperture and slowest shutter speed. Then when the light gets worse, know already which one you are prepared to sacrifice first. Equally if it is a chopper or you are after background blur, you may say, highest ISO, smallest aperture (before diffraction occurs) and fastest shutter speed to achieve neccessary blur, as well as slowest shutter before it is impossible. But those are creative settings, just remember that they are all linked and you need to balance them and prioritise them in less than ideal conditions.

A lot of what I do is in the processing anyway, the planes are pulled out as a separate layer and worked on independently of the backgrounds, so the settings you see are only the starting point.
 
Excellent set, well done indeed (y)
 
I saw the C17 at RIAT as a static display and it was blooooody huge - that must have been one hell of a sight doing thought the loop :)
 
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