> *removes 'photography geek' hat* I've been looking at the picture close up with such photography geek eyes as I can muster (vaaast experience, questionable skill :-) ), and the more I see the less I believe it. It's essentially certain that the event was real and that the aeroplane did essentially what we see in the photo but it MAY have been a cut and paste from two photos to improve the overall result. If so the editing is superb. The outline is immaculate. The through cockpit view is not quite what I'd expect, but that's still possibly OK. 1. A closeup of the prop allows you to see space ahead and behind the 'spinner' so you can assess whether there is any front / back ghosting. There's none that I can see. Either the shutter speed was very very very fast or the panning was very good. The lens was a Sigma 170-500mm telephoto. These are f5+ and cost about $US500 on ebay so are moderately priced for their spec. I'd expect them to be a reasonably good performer but certainly not utterly superb. The photo is AFAICS about 25 feet across. At 500mm that could have been taken from about 400 feet away. Say around 130 feet at 170mm . Airshows being what they are more like the former is more likely unless the photographer was inside the crowd barriers - which he may have been. If he was panning then 'motordrive' at about ?4 frames / second would have allowed several prior "gates" to also be photographed as the plane approached, but the precise placement suggests a single shot (or cooked photo). The EOS350 would probably not have been set to above 400 ISO to get that quality. If it had been a higher spec Canon then a faster ISO would be possible. 2. You can see details of all aspects of the rear pole bearer through the pole. For this to happen the pole would have had to have moved sideways by at least a pole width during the course of the shot. Given the high shutter speed that was almost certainly used he must have waved his pole VERY fast to achieve this. I would hope that a pole bearer would do a fine imitation of a rock in such a circumstance. A panning camera would help this effect a little if it panned in the opposite direction to which the pole was waved BUT the effect would have to be very large to achieve a significant effect. Taken to extremes, say he moved the pole only 2 inches sideways and the shutter speed was only 1/100th of a second. The horizontal velocity would be 2/.01 = 200"/second =~ 17 feet/second =~ 11+ mph. I'd be surprised if they'd employ a person in this role who was not much much steadier than that (by an order of magnitude or two), and that's at 1/100th second. At 1/1000th second (far more likely) he's waving his pole sideways at 110 mph. They all die :-) :-(. If he is NOT waving the pole that fast then there is something aglae. Because - If a distant in focus object has a thin out of focus object closer to the lens such that the lens can "see" the in focus object on either side of the interposing object then the closer object may become invisible. I have taken photos through wire netting fences with a long focal length lens at large apertures such that the fence is completely unseen in the photo. The quality suffers but non-experts may not be aware that there was anything in the foreground. In this case this "seeing through things" does not apply as the pole is obscuring the scene (person) immediately behind it and no part of the lens can "see" all the hidden material. So, the fact that we CAN see completely through the pole is "suspicious". The same applies to the red triangular objects protruding rearwards from the wing tips. Both of these are visible right through the frontmost pole. This could be explained by claiming that the panned aircraft travelled this far during the shot so that the image was taken before the triangle entered the region behind the pole. HOWEVER this would equally apply to all leading and trailing intersections with the plane and background and especially the rear of the vertical stabiliser and front of the prop/spinner should have similar "ghosting". They are all as clear as could be desired. The general sharpness of the outline throughout without background interaction is very 'troubling' in this respect. A possible factor would be use of flash, which would greatly enhance the contrast of foreground over background, but there doesn't seem to be pronounced flash effect on the pole holders. Shadows are not impossible but feel wrong. There is massive telephoto foreshortening which may account for some of this. Look at shadow angle from rear horizontal stabiliser (tail). Note angle of shadow pointing to where the sun is. Now note the main shadow on the runway relative to the wings and the pole holders shadows. Also the shadow of the horizontal stabiliser on the runway. All the runway shadows appear far closer to vertically below the craft than the shadow angle on the tail would indicate they would be. Also note the shadow line just above the H of Honda. This is far closer to vertical than the tail shadow line. The shadow below the front edge of the wing is consistent with most other shadows. The tail/stabiliser shadow seems to be the odd one out. All of the above shadow stuff MAY be explained by the sun coming from off to one side so the tail shadow is a projection from one side BUT the aircraft runway shadows and pole bearer shadows suggest near vertical sun. Other small shadows seem a bit randomly oriented. So, overall: I think it *seems* to be a clever montage showing a real event but using material from several photos. But - I may be wrong. Russell McMahon ----- Original Message ----- From: "Philip Pemberton" To: "Microcontroller discussion list - Public." Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 2:05 AM Subject: Re: [OT]:: Darwin award candidates - Sukhoi SU62 G-SIID and 5 friends > Jinx wrote: >>> But why is the prop not blurred? >> >> If you look very closely it is >> >> Assuming 1m blades @ 2500rpm, gives tip speed of 131m/s. 5cm >> blur would be 382us shutter speed >> > > Which is 1/2617.8 of a second. The nearest shutter speed to that is > probably > 1/2000, which is completely plausible in bright sunlight with the > aperture > almost completely open. > > One thing's for sure, the photographer was either very close, or had > a VERY > good lens. I don't think even the Canon L-series glass is that sharp > fully open... > > And at that sort of speed, IS would be utterly pointless. The blur > is just > because the camera's panning to keep the plane sharp, but because > the people > are static they're getting blurred (because the camera's moving). > It's an old > trick, but it works well. > > *removes 'photography geek' hat* -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist