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The Nikon D7200

by | Nov 6, 2024 | Camera, Optical Enhancement, Spotting

Is the D7200 good enough?

The Nikon D7200 is now a ten year old camera, is it still good enough for aviation photography? In my opinion it definately is and it offers quite a few surprises, especially when it comes to taking aircraft photographs. If you don’t want to go for the latest D7500 or the upscalled D500, the D7200 is a reasonably priced option on the scond user or refurbished market. You can buy a D7200 kit with an 18-140mm lense fully renewed on Amazon for a reasonable price.

The image quality is excellent, as is the auto focus. And with a battery life of over 1100 shots, there’s enough capacity for a full days shooting at an air show. The camera is no slouch, running at a full 6 frames per second. The camera can shoot in NEF or JPG, if your shooting JPG – the buffer can handle 100 shots or 16 seconds of continuos shooting.

There are a couple of other nice features, the additional 1.3 crop mode can effectively double the focal lenth of your lense. And the in built flash is great for inside shots, for a nearly 10 year old camera the ISO performance is outstanding. The image below was taken using the 1.3 crop mode, it was taken from the same location as the header photograph using a standard Nikkor 18-200mm lense. Both images at the same focal lenth, exposure, apature and ISO settings – it wasn’t a great day and my photographic skills leave somethong to be desired.

Anyway, I’d say that the Nikon D7200 is a more than capable camera for aviation photography – it is certainly in my bag.

 

I’d say that the Nikon D7200 is more than adequate for most photography needs, with it’s 6 frames a second, large buffer and the additional 1.3 crop factore I think that it is great. It is in my bag and it will remain there for the forseeable future.

 

Support this site.

It does take some time and effort to create these downloads, also there are a number of costs associated with running the site. So if you can consider supporting this site with a donation it would be helpful, if you find the site useful then why not treat me to a doughnut – or even a doughnut and a coffee if you’re feeling really flush.

Or if you are thinking of ordering something from Amazon then you could click the link to get there, it doesn’t actually cost you anything. And it will help me to pay for the site hosting, which is getting more expensive like everything else.

But regardless of whether you donate or not, I hope that the contents of the files are of some use, also bear in mind that the files are as dated in the bar graph on the down load page – I will try and produce a new data set every month or more frequently if time allows.

Please note these files are provided for personal use, if you want to use them for any other purpose or if you want to make them available through your own site – get in touch first.

 

 

The Crop Factor

by | Nov 6, 2024 | Camera, Optical Enhancement, Spotting

What is the Crop Factor?

The crop factor is effectively a focal length multiplier, but that isn’t as described. It basically relates to the ratio of the diagonals of the sensors within the camera, the standard full frame sensor is the same size as 35mm film. With most other sensors being smaller by what we term the crop factor, using Nikon as an example. \the diagonal of the crop sensor DX format, will fit into the diagonal of the FX sensor 1.5 times.

There is an excellent description here with some very good image examples. It is worth checking out this page, to gain a better understanding. If you would like to check out your camera and lense combination, there are a number of crop factor calculator sites.

What does it mean to the photographer, well in ordinary terms not that much. Pretty much what you see through the viewfinder is what you get. Where it becomes problematic is when you use cfop format lenses on full frame camera’s, as the image can be dark at the corners.

What are the benefits?

In essence the 1.5 crop factor a Nikon camera is applied to the focal lenth of the lense, making a 200mm lense apear to be a 300mm lense. This is due to the camera discarding a larger portion of the image, when compared in area of the DX sensor is less than half that of the FX sensor. This provides what is effectively an increas in focal lenth, it is also worth noting the crop sensor cameras and lenses are less costly than full frame cameras.

What are the drawbacks?

For a given resolution say 24Mp, the photo sites on the sensor are much smaller. Which means it is generally less sensitive to light and less tolerant of movement, although with image stabilisation this is not so much of a problem in modern cameras. The differenced between the capabilities of DX and FX formats, has over the years narrowed. Both formats are capable of producing outstanding images in the right hand.

A recommendation!

Im not in a position to say buy one or the other, I use both formats in my Nikon DSLR’s. I would however say, that the DX format cameras have done the job equally as well as the FX format cameras. I would suggest that buying a camera like these is a big ticket item, do your homework before parting with the cash. Also, there are a number of photographic companies that hire cameras in both formats. It is worth hiring the equipment to test, although with the more advanced models there can be a steep learning curve.

 

Support this site.

It does take some time and effort to create these downloads, also there are a number of costs associated with running the site. So if you can consider supporting this site with a donation it would be helpful, if you find the site useful then why not treat me to a doughnut – or even a doughnut and a coffee if you’re feeling really flush.

Or if you are thinking of ordering something from Amazon then you could click the link to get there, it doesn’t actually cost you anything. And it will help me to pay for the site hosting, which is getting more expensive like everything else.

But regardless of whether you donate or not, I hope that the contents of the files are of some use, also bear in mind that the files are as dated in the bar graph on the down load page – I will try and produce a new data set every month or more frequently if time allows.

Please note these files are provided for personal use, if you want to use them for any other purpose or if you want to make them available through your own site – get in touch first.

 

 

Surprising Development

by | Nov 6, 2024 | Application, Camera, Database, Downloads, Online Logging, Optical Enhancement, Radio, Software Reviews, Spotting

Unexpected Development.

I have decided to update the Plane Spotting Guide, it has come as a surprise to see that this was the most popular download of the last three months. The original guide was quite terse, with just a few pointers – I’ve enlarged it. Adding a few more sections and quite a few links that I hope will be useful.

 The whole guide has been updated, hopefully it will be of some use in its revised form.

 

Support this site.

It does take some time and effort to create these downloads, also there are a number of costs associated with running the site. So if you can consider supporting this site with a donation it would be helpful, if you find the site useful then why not treat me to a doughnut – or even a doughnut and a coffee if you’re feeling really flush.

Or if you are thinking of ordering something from Amazon then you could click the link to get there, it doesn’t actually cost you anything. And it will help me to pay for the site hosting, which is getting more expensive like everything else.

But regardless of whether you donate or not, I hope that the contents of the files are of some use, also bear in mind that the files are as dated in the bar graph on the down load page – I will try and produce a new data set every month or more frequently if time allows.

Please note these files are provided for personal use, if you want to use them for any other purpose or if you want to make them available through your own site – get in touch first.

 

 

How can I identify a PIA aircraft?

by | Nov 22, 2023 | Aviation News, Database, Online Logging, Optical Enhancement, Radio, Spotting, Spotting Locations, Spotting News

Well this is a bit of a conundrum, you see a plane look it up on one of the tracking sites and all there is is a ICAO code and a call sign. Everything else, registration, type, origin, destination and many other spotter friendly features are not displayed.

How then do you find out the actual identity of the aircraft and whatever other information that you like to collect?

Well the truth is you won’t get the information without some effort, it’s unlikely that you’ll find out the information without the help of other spotters. The only certain way of identifying these aircraft is a physical sighting, at either end of the flight – so if you can’t be at the airport when it lands then other spotter groups would probably be the place to start.

Typically a week day view of US air space will show thousands of aircraft, and the vast majority of these are readily identifiable using applications or web sites like flightradar24 or in this case globe.adsbexchange.com.

So in most cases looking up and seeing an aircraft, will if you know where you are – make the identification fairly straight forward, a quick look at the app or website and you have everything you need.

In the begining tracking flights was more technical, there were tools like ACARS – but you needed certain technical skills to use that to track aircraft. But along came flightradar24, this was an absolute boon to the spotters.

Lack of privacy was seen to be a problem, so along came the FAA’s LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) – which is a filter that the FAA puts in place for anyone taking a data feed from them – the image is LADD subscribed aircraft.

Just to be clear, these three screen shots were taken within a few minutes of each other the bottom shot is filtered by PIA subscribed aircraft.

As you can see, there aren’t that many aircraft in the view. But what I can say is that there is literally no information that would interest a spotter, the navigational information is there but little else is available.

In the next post I’ll go over the options and list some of the ways that you can try and find out the aircraft identity. But in the mean time consider this, both the LADD and the PIA services are free – so it’s likely that people using the LADD service will move to the PIA service.

Spotter Evolution – Beginning.

by | Oct 29, 2022 | Camera, Optical Enhancement, Radio, Spotting, Spotting News

A conversation with a fellow spotter raised a couple of questions about plane spotting, like when it started and why do people do it? The second is probably easier to answer than the first, as in – for the most part people enjoy watching aircraft and other aspects of the hobby. There are probably not that many spotters who have made their fortune from spotting, some have I’m sure but I’m also pretty sure that these people were spotters before they monetised their interest or hobby.

If you go looking for when Plane Spotting (Or probably more correctly) Aircraft Spotting actaully bagan, you can find numerous threads on the older aviation forums – these usually deteriorate into a bun fight during the course of the thread.

Mostly with references to spotters of other things, with Trains, Busses, Cars and even Birds all being denigrated by Aircraft Spotters. And yet I have met a number of Aircraft Spotters who collected information on some or all of the above, after all it is a hobby and as such pretty much on a par with any other hobby.

When did it all start is much more of a quandry, looking through the online archives of publications – the earliest mentions of the hobby that I can find seem to date from the very early 1950’s. Although other sources seem to date it from the 1940’s, however I’m aware of at least one spotter from the early 1930’s – so I’m guessing that it is still all open to confirmation.

A number of sources point to the formation of the Observer Corps as sowing the seeds of the hobby, with the pastime gaining traction after WWII. Although the Observer Corps can rightfully claim that it’s inception goes back to WWI, where the War Office used whatever resources that it could – these included both Army and Naval peronnel along with Special Constables, Lighthouse Keepers and even Boy Scouts to man observation posts and report aircraft movements.

The earliest log that I’m aware of is dated the 12th of December 1935, but I’m sure that it won’t be the earliest log that there is. Most peoples logs probably don’t survive them by long, only in a few instances will there be enough foresight to ensure that the collection of logs survives and goes to somewhere with the resource to hold the it.

The average person during the inter war years is unlikely to have had very much spare time or money to indulge in a hobby like aircraft or any other type of spotting, so at best these people may have stretched to a notebook and pencil – few would have had binoculars or a camera. However after WWII much changed, more free time and more disposable income would lead to more people with time to indulge in a hobby.

Along with the above came a veritable treasure trove of equipment availability, courtesy of Government Surplus – in the form of Binoculars, Radio Recievers and trained people admittedly mostly ex-forces but many turned their training towards their new hobby – Aircraft Spotting.

Cheap Optics worth it or not?

by | Jul 1, 2022 | Equipment Reviews., Optical Enhancement, Spotting

There is an old saying, frequently used to justify spending money. “You only get what you pay for.” is the saying, when it comes to an item like binoculars and telescopes – the cost difference beteen the cheapest and the dearest is huge and I wonder if they are that much better.

Here we have two pairs of binoculars both 10×50 and both found on Amazon, with one pair costing one hundred and twenty times more than the other. I’d like to know if the performace difference is as great, I suspect it is not – not that I would even consider a pair of binoculars at over £3,000.

Having a quick look at each of the Amazon reviews for these products is interesting, the cheap binoculars have over 200 reviews and an average score of 4.2. Whereas the expensive binoculars have no reviews, which in truth only indicates that no one has reviewed them on this site. However there are online reviews and huge price variations on other sites, with at least one site retailing these for £1,200 less than Amazon.

Still at over £1,800 they are still out of my price range, so I’m certainly unlikely to be getting my hands on a pair any time soon. For reference, just in case anyone is in the slightest interested. I carry a Bushnell 16×52 monocular in the car at all times, how would I rate it – in truth not great. Although the optics are clear, the magnificatin is closer to 8 and the object lens is about 35mm – but it does now come with a mini tripod and a smartphone holder (mine didn’t) all for the pricely sum of £7.99 so it sits in the car – just in case. And I should add that although the quality isn’t in the same league as many other monoculars or telescopes, the Bushnell cost me less than the average fish supper and that included next day delivery!