Lessons Learned
AirVenture Air Show

Oshkosh Airventure 2004
July 22 – August 1, 2004

Objectives

To evaluate the latest digital photo equipment as a baseline for commercial photography.
To do this simultaneously on both Nikon and Canon equipment.

To gain experience in all aspects of digital photography from technique to media handling to workflow.
To use the broadest range of equipment possible.

To continue the evaluation of flying as a future endeavor, possibly as the basis of a photo platform.

Airventure is one of the best places to accomplish this.

Equipment

The photo bag included the following:

Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 Serial Z2093243PU
Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 Serial Z2118185P
Fujitsu Lifebook P Series P5020 Notebook Part # CP185215-01 - Serial R3Z06745

Netgear Ethernet 10/100 Switch
USB 2.0 Disk drive with a 250GB hard disk attached
This was connected to the Lifebook

Canon 1D Mk II Serial 215310
Canon 1D Mk II Serial 215563

Canon 16 - 35mm f/2.8 USM L Lens- Serial [21] 0022057
Canon 100 - 400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS USM L Lens- Serial 246336
Canon 70 - 200mm f/2.6 IS USM Lens - Serial 43036
Canon 28 - 135 F/3.5-5.6 IS USM - Serial 71001726
Canon 100mm F/2.8 Macro USM - Serial 4657A006
Canon 50mm F/2.8 Compact Macro - Serial 2537A003
Canon 400mm F/5.6 L USM - Serial 110181
Canon 500mm F/4 L USM IS - Serial 40520

Canon 52mm Drop In Circular Polarizer CACPDI52
Canon Extender EF 1.4 X II – Serial 00029992
Canon Extender EF 2.0 X II - Serial 00027715
Canon Speedlite 550EX Serial 050516

Nikon D2H - Serial 2004105
Nikon D2H - Serial 2004146

17-35mm f/2.8D ED AF-S (IF) Zoom-Nikkor, Serial US 237161
24 - 85mm f/3.5 - 4.5G AF-S (IF) ED (Japan) Lens Serial 2010205
80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D ED VR AF Zoom-Nikkor, Serial US 210585
70-200mm f/2.8 EDIF AFS-G VR Zoom-Nikkor, Serial 0226081
50mm f/1.8 D (Japan) Serial 201172
60mm f/2.8D AF-D Micro Nikkor, Serial L 3143958
105mm f/2.8D AF-D Micro Nikkor, Serial US 3443201
500mm f/4D IF-ED AF-S II (Black), Nikkor, Serial 0200306
200-400mm f/4 VRS AF Zoom-Nikkor, Serial US 200774

Nikon SB-800 Speedlight, Serial 2028574

Manfrotto Carbon One 449 Monopod
Manfrotto 3 Section Carbon Fiber Tripod Model 3443
Gitzo Mk2 G1568 Carbon Fiber Monopod
Gitzo Mk2 G1228 Carbon Fiber Tripod

2X Wimberley Head

4X 4GB Microdrive
1GB Microdrive
2X 1GB CF Card

Plan

The plan before arriving at Oshkosh included the following.

Establish a network of 3 computers to share the following tasks:
Downloading of the images;
Storage of images;
Processing of images and
Writing the trip report.

My son and I would be in “competition” to shoot pictures each day and we would change the equipment also each day so neither of us was biased to one camera. In general, we went out each morning with two cameras.

To use a different lens mix from the morning, just shooting the event, from that used during the air show. Long focal length lenses were the norm during the air show.

ASA 200 for both cameras.

Each camera was loaded with a 4GB microdrive.

Shoot RAW and JPEG to evaluate each type on each camera.

Bracket the exposures.

Evaluate as much of the equipment as possible.

Setting Up the LAN

The task of setting up the network encountered many problems.

Peer to Peer networking works within Widows XP operates when computers are in a workgroup. However, most networks, including 4th Wave’s, are based on a domain. At the center of this is a domain controller which validates all the computers and users on the network under AD – Active Directory. This is much more flexible than the workgroup approach. As a result, the current user accounts for the domain will not work in a peer-to-peer configuration. A workgroup has an identity different from a domain and as a result a new set of user accounts must be created. At the same time, in spite of the fact that the account was set up as an administrator, there were security and access issues. The most important one is that one PC would not recognize a user account from machine to another. The user permissions seemed crude compared to what can be done under a domain. For example, to share a disk one can only specify to share but further attributes are not possible. But even when a disk is shared it was not possible for a guest to get access to folders on the disk. These had to be shared on a folder by folder basis. Some of this is logical because there is no master directory to validate user accounts across machines. Thus, to be an administrator on one machine has no meaning on another machine.

Overall the networking was erratic. A shared folder would work and then not.

One of the Toshiba 6100 computers was only recently set up and it did not have many of the applications loaded. The plan was to load this up, as time permitted, but nothing was done. The reason being that software could not be loaded on the domain user account.

One of the poor aspects of domain vs. workgroup user accounts is that once the workgroup account is established the domain account becomes unusable. In fact, in the user account directory, i.e., My Computer > Properties >Advanced > User Profiles > Settings, the Domain user account becomes unknown when one is logged onto the workgroup account. One must rejoin the domain to have this account made active again. However, this will not work to allow for sign-ons remotely. For example, while connected at the Starbucks restaurant, with the workgroup account, it was possible to rejoin the domain, when a tunnel had been established to the domain FOURTHWAVE, but this was not persistent. The computer was disconnected and I sought to sign on to the domain account, as I might while on the road, but the sign on would not work unless I am physically connected to the network at the time to computer is being booted. That is, the computer needed the AD domain computer to validate the sign on. A dial-up option was tried from the sign-on dialog but this would not work because the Starbucks WiFi connection to the FOURTHWAVE domain would only work with VPN, which was not reachable from the sign-on. Thus, the only way to make the sign-on persistent, as before, is to establish the user account on the computer while on the domain name network. All of this had a irreversible trap-door feeling about it.

Because of all these limitations it was not possible to set up anything but the most simple storage of the images collected. I defined file folders on the C drive of each machine and shared these. In the event these are not accessible while signed on to the domain I have also placed the folders on a USB 2.0 disk drive which is attached to one of the computers on the network. This was actually quite important as we progressively ran out of storage on the network computers due to the high volume of collected images.

We could not have kept all the images if the 250GB USB 2.0 drive was not a part of the photo bag.

Bottom line – “simple” networking is not really simple once one has used the computers on an Active Directory based network. Peer-to-Peer networking and Active Directory based networking do not mix.

Lessons Learned

In retrospect it was just poor planning to have started this without setting up the IT side in advance. A much better solution, but not an easy one, would be to have set up a domain controller under Windows Server 2003 which looked like a FOURTHWAVE domain. This would have been a notebook that only did this function and possibly storage. The problem being that such a network would not be persistent – set up and tear down for just this event. Given that I have little experience in the configuration of Windows Server 2003 one would have to assume a number of hours would be required.

Work Flow Notes

Image downloading was not efficient. Each camera had a 4GB drive and I tried to use each computer to download each drive but this was terribly slow on 2 of the three. The Fujitsu Lifebook, in spite of having a socket which takes the microdrive directly, it took nearly 45 minutes to download the content. However, one of the Toshiba’s has the drivers for a 32bit version of the PCMCIA card adapter for the CF cards and the download only took 17 minutes (4GB microdrive times)

Based on the experience above I adopted a different technique. Took the one computer with the 32 bit PCMCIA card drivers and used this set up exclusively for taking the images off the CF media. The images as they came off the CF were copied directly to the Toshiba 6100 with the most disk space. Thus, the network performance was greater than the CF media reading, even for the 32 bit card reader. As a result the time to download the days take was about 1:15. When all the images were set up on the Toshiba thumbnail images were created. Then the images were reviewed. After all this the folder of the day’s take was put on the USB 2.0 250GB drive.

All the images were handled as follows:

Folder with a name such as:
Oshkosh 2004 7-29-04
Folders inside with the camera type and serial number

This allows for easy access and traceability for how it was shot.

Lessons Learned

With 3 computers here one should be able to rapidly unload 3 microdrives at the same time. It did not happen. This is another example, where no testing was done on the network in advance. Running through the work flow in advance would have resolved many of these issues.

The day’s activity was time constrained and there was not as much time to work with the images. At most we both did a top level review of the images at the end of the day. The day usually ran from 8am to 6pm on the grounds and the air show, 3 hours to download the images and prepare the thumbnails and a short time to review the images. No image processing was done including handling of the RAW images. The lesson learned – do not expect to do much with the images at the end of the day.

Shooting Strategy

Here is the range of JPEG + RAW storage.

Canon

RAW – 9.9 – 6.8 MB per image
JPEG – 6.2 – 3.2 MB per image

Nikon

RAW – 3.1 – 2.7 MB per image
JPEG – 2.7 – 3.4 MB per image

The bracketing set up was – 3 shots at 1/3 f stop above a below. This proved excellent. With these fast frame cameras taking 3 shorts compared to 1 is nothing. As a result we always found an excellent exposure. I have found that the cameras just do not predict the best exposure, at least to my satisfaction. Given smaller dynamic range of the digital sensors, compared to film, it is easy to blow out sections of a brightly lit scene. Bracketing provides a lot more control over what can be selected.

Once the ThumbsPlus images were generated at the end of the work flow we were able to review to days take. This was a real learning experience. It is also a time to make fun of each other on who got the best pictures. It is also an enjoyable experience to look at how good the shots are and criticize the mistakes.

Camera Management

By the first day of the air show I finally got the camera and lens management down. It went as follows.

Before leaving I laid out the lenses to be used for the day. This also includes the plan on the switch to the long lenses for the air show shooting in the afternoon.

Each evening the batteries and the storage media had to be managed so that the batteries were fresh and the microdrives empty.

Carrying all this gear is a real challenge. On the flight line we each had:

Lawn chair;
Two cameras;
One long focal length lens and one shorter lens;
Additional media and batteries, and
Monopod.

Here is an example of one day.

I shot Canon while Mark shot Nikon. During the air show he used only the Nikon 80 – 400 mm VR lens while nearly all my pictures were with the 500mm Canon. This is quite a chore to handle, in spite of the Wimberley mounted on a monopod. For example, straight up vertical shots were next to impossible from a lawn chair and Wimberly on a monopod.

Long Focal Length Lens Handling

The horizon or vertical alignment technique on the long lenses had the monopod go off vertical whenever required to get the shot. The lens was rotated in its mount to align the camera.

Mark did not like the Wimberley.

We later ended up doing many hand held shots with the long focal length lenses. I did nearly all the Nikon 200 – 400 VR shooting this way.

Early Image Quality Assessment

We did our first comparison of images between the Nikon and Canon as soon as possible. For all practical purposes the image quality was at parity. Out of all the images shot today, Friday, I found two shots of similar scale and composition. These were blown up to where the pixels could be seen. The two shots were.

Airplane on taxi
One could not tell the difference in terms of quality between the two. I zoomed in on the pilot.
Automobile grill
Slight artifacts and resolution effects could be seen on the Nikon compared to the Canon. But this was minor.

Given that the Nikon D2H is “only” 4mp its image quality is stunning.

Lesson Learned

I have seen a few notes online that the IQ of the Nikon, in spite of being 4M pixels, is very good. This is true, much to my surprise. Yes, the Canon and Nikon cameras are quite close.

Note that I have not done a detailed comparison between these cameras in a wide variety of shooting environments. For most of the shooting I do this is not important. Other factors such as dynamic range and noise are more important.

It is possible that I might gain more for the comparison using RAW from each camera. During the shooting time did not permit this.

Experiences

This is one of the most demanding environments on auto focus. Airplanes are moving at 300+ mph and in many cases they are no more than 1/8 mile away. In taking such shots there are two approaches:

One is to pan on a airplane at it flies by. A key auto focus shortfall is that the aircraft will only be partially in the frame. Given that auto focus relies on contrast to focus it is quite impressive that the vast majority of the frames are in focus.

The second technique is to focus at a specific point and fire the camera at the highest frame rate hoping to catch the plane in the scene.

We used both techniques based on the shooting objective.

A major advance in auto focus came with the Canon on the 1D Mk II. Last year the 10D did poorly here. It is a whole new game with the 1D Mk II. The Nikon 2DH has no problems with auto focus. Yes, there were some images out of focus but in most cases these were easily explained.

Review of the 500mm Canon showed excellent images. Very pleased that auto focus is not an issue. Shot many pictures of high speed aircraft traveling at 300+mph and was able to keep most in the frame as they passed the show line, using the panning technique. Some of the shots of the pilots, on the reviewing line, were excellent. Overall very few bad shots, other than framing as the aircraft flew at high rates.

The long focal length lenses are a good news bad news story. The good news is that they take some of the best pictures. They provide a vantage point impossible to reach. The old axiom – put the most pixels as possible on the subject – fits these lenses perfectly. Further, a $5,000 lens is priced at that level for a reason – size, complexity and quality. The bad news is that they are a real burden to carry. Even here at the air show where the RV is not far away, there are no theft issues and we are shooting from a lawn chair it still remains a considerable burden.

A major problem was lack of storage for all the images taken. On two days we used nearly 19GB of storage, every CF media I carried with me, taking pictures at the air show. On one day images were scattered all over the disk drives in order to keep finding space. In the end I ran out of storage media on the Canon, about 5:45pm. This did not have much impact on what I took, however, as the air show was about to end.

One of the cameras, the Nikon D2H has a processing problem, Serial 2004105. It takes longer to complete the buffer fill in high frame rate shooting. The camera will also shoot an errant exposure 1 second after the sequence is shot, usually 2 or 3 in a fast sequence. Both Mark and I have noted this. The camera has been sent to Nikon for repair. This is one of the advantages to having two cameras available to compare.

The only 1GB microdrive we had with us failed. Some images were lost but it was not a major impact. This is the first microdrive I have had failed, out of some 8 that have or are currently owned.

Overall I have been very pleased with the cameras and lenses.

Lessons Learned

One is just intimidated what it would take to accomplish a major shooting expedition. Yes, we went over the edge with all this gear. But a major problem not solved, even when using only one camera is the build up of storage requirements. One of the Toshiba 6100 notebooks has the largest notebook hard drive available today – 80GB. This is a drop in the shooting bucket. As soon as one crosses this boundary either an external hard drive or network is required. This again complicates matters greatly.

Yes, we made many of our own problems by bracket shooting and simultaneous RAW and JPEG recording. But this is a realistic reflection of what we consider necessary in professional shooting environment.

Questions

How much difference did the IS or VR lenses make?

We did not see any but I was not specifically looking for this. I shot all the images on the Nikon 200 – 400mm lens handheld. It worked fine.

Which camera is best?

Neither.

Canon

Awkward user interface compared to Nikon
More consistent high frame rate shooting when recording both RAW and JPEG.

Nikon

Ease of use.

Are these commercial grade cameras compared to film?

No doubt.

What was not used?

Polarizers
Some of the lenses
Tripods

Does Full Frame matter anymore?

I believe that one would face a new set of challenges using full fame at high frame rate shooting. One would be more critical of resolution performance under these conditions and lens performance might be an issue.

What is the impact of RAW on image quality?

Do not yet know as these images have not been processed.

What would be done differently next time?

This is very much dependent on the equipment available. It is unlikely the lenses would change, only the cameras. Would love to do this test again with 8f/s FF Nikon and Canon cameras.

If available, carry larger storage media or at least more of them.

What was the most valuable lesson learned?

Experience, Experience and Experience. We have only begun.

What was the most fun?

Getting stopped many times by those who wanted to talk digital cameras and ask questions.

Shooting Statistics

The storage was 62GB.

Updated on {7/11/2005