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P-38s at Sacramento Sept 2010

Thu Sep 16, 2010 4:03 pm

Hi, I'm new here, but been a Warbird fan for a long time. Last weekend I attended the Capital Classic Airshow in Sacramento, CA, which hosted a gathering of P-38 Lightnings. Four of them actually attended: Ruff Stuff (NX79123), Thoughts of Midnight (NL38TF), Glacier Girl (NX17630, now probably the most famous P-38 "alive"), and Honey Bunny (NL7723C).

I did take a number of close-up photos of all four, and shot walkaround videos in HD. (Not too many photos, because I concentrated on the walkaround vids.) They're not pro quality, and have a lot of background noise, (and some dust on the lens that shows when facing the sun!) but they're not bad. I was wondering if people would like to see them posted here -- or, if not, where would be a good place for the videos?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

Wayne Anderson

Test photo: Guns of "Honey Bunny":
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Last edited by Wander on Thu Sep 16, 2010 10:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Re: P-38s at Sacramento Sept 2010

Thu Sep 16, 2010 9:33 pm

Welcome to WiX! I'd post the vids at YouTube, Flickr, or Vimeno. Then post a URL with a description of what you want us to see. I know a lot of us East Coasters would love to see the footage.

Re: P-38s at Sacramento Sept 2010

Thu Sep 16, 2010 10:55 pm

Thanks for the welcome! Since I took your advice and set up a Photobucket account, I think I'll go ahead and post some of my pics!

Please remember, these are copyrighted by me -- use them for your own use, but don't distribute them or use them commercially!
Thanks!

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This is an overall view of "Honey Bunny"

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This is the lineup of four. From nearest: Honey Bunny, Ruff Stuff, Thoughts of Midnight, and Glacier Girl (just the nose is visible from here)

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A good view of "Ruff Stuff," easily identified by the yellow X on the nose.

Let me know if you want more!

Re: P-38s at Sacramento Sept 2010

Fri Sep 17, 2010 2:37 pm

Looks like you might need to adjust the "white balance" on your camera. That should eliminate the blue tint. Great photos though! Welcome. Wish I could have been there.

Re: P-38s at Sacramento Sept 2010

Fri Sep 17, 2010 3:19 pm

Yeah, I didn't realize it was still set for incandescent light -- and with the sunlight on the screen, it was hard to tell at the time. I've done some adjusting on the blue tint, but it's limited.

The vids seem not to have that white balance issue; I think the video recording has its own white balance setting. Unfortunately I didn't get many decent shots of the planes in flight -- the lens has plenty of zoom (equivalent to 678mm in 35mm terms), but the camera is so small and light that, even with a tripod, I couldn't track the fast-moving planes well, and the image stabilization wasn't up to the job. (And the autofocus gets confused when it's faced with a moment of blank blue sky. I had set it to manual focus earlier, on infinity, but switched that off doing the close shots of the planes. Shows there's no substitute for doing it yourself!)

These were shot with a Nikon P100 super zoom camera. I had planned to buy a Nikon D200 from a friend before the event, but he changed his mind about selling it, so I had to work with what I have. Maybe next year...

I'll try to get some of the walkaround vids posted this weekend.
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