Concorde from my back garden

[Miles]

Just thought I'd share some pictures taken with my 10D and a 28-135 lens last week of Concorde.

I live directly underneath it's flight path out of Heathrow airport in a small village called Shepperton. As I heard it fly over I grabbed my camera and took 3 shots in RAW mode at full zoom (f5.6 & 100 ASA if I remember correctly). Luckily the sky was completely clear at the time.

I couldn't believe the quality of the resulting images - as you can see from the links below. I had to digitally zoom and crop the images in Photoshop but given that the plane was pretty high, the mere fact that I can read the "British Airways" logo and almost make out the plane identification number amazes me.

http://freespace.virgin.net/miles.carter/concorde/103_0324.jpg

http://freespace.virgin.net/miles.carter/concorde/103_0323.jpg

http://freespace.virgin.net/miles.carter/concorde/103_0322.jpg

The 10D and a 28-135 lens really do provide some outstanding pictures.

[SoCal69]

Very impressive! Will your PS work yield a reasonable print size/resolution? If you get the chance, please post an uncropped version just for the sake of comparison to the cropped version.

[mapdealer]

Yes, nice shots, and yes, please post an undoctored version.

[lime]

Cool Shot!

I didn't think the 28-135 was that fast ;>)

[CyberDyneSystems]

Thats really cool! :D

[Miles]

Here's an unedited original (All I have done is convert from RAW using Capture One DSLR):

http://freespace.virgin.net/miles.carter/concorde/103_0323%20uncropped.jpg

The jpeg quality has been set to low to make the file a manageable size.

On the cropped versions the only other editing I did was to use a Sunshine filter on the image to brighten it up.

Printing at 7x5 gave an acceptable print.

Miles

[RedvaneFox]

Actually I rather like the undoctored one.

[Kees Terberg]

I dont care what anyone else says... cropped or not, they are pretty amazing shots. Perhaps you could sell them to one of the aviation websites:
http://www.airliners.net/

Kees

[wtlloyd]

You may have heard it fly over, but you probably didn't hear anything else for a while!

You must be at least somewhat glad it's not flying anymore, did the windows ever crack?

Terrific photo, you should be proud.

[Miles]

Well I made that mistake yesterday when i went to the airport to take some shots of it taking off. I thought my head was going to explode!!! I now realise why all the other spectators were wearing earplugs!!! (I've never been interested in aircraft before and was amazed at the number of people who turned up to watch the take-off). Got some incredible images though.

Digital photography really comes into its own in situations like this - with the 6.3 megapixel sensor I can zoom right into onto the aircraft at lift off and find an incredible amount of detail in the resultant picture. I try not to drop below 200 ASA or the image becomes a little grainy on high magnification.

Also, I would never have got the shots I wanted with an EOS 300D as I absolutely needed the 9 fps continuous shooting (on servo focus) as the aircraft is so damned fast!!

If anyone lives near Heathrow and has a 10D I'd definitely recommend trying to get some shots of this aircraft as come October 24th you'll never see one like it again - if anyone wants advice on where to stand to get the take-off or landing shots, let me know.