Airplane Spotting at Night

moose135

Short days and long work weeks don't make for good spotting, so I thought I'd head over to the Overview at Charlotte tonight. It was a balmy 55F at 8pm, and I spent a little time shooting airplanes in the dark. It's a little tricky, because even when there is a line of aircraft waiting to get out, if everyone gets in a rhythm, they pretty well keep moving. You have to wait until tower clears someone to taxi across downfield, or there is someone arriving on that runway for traffic to stop long enough to get a shot.

US Airways A321



US Airways A320



Santa's big helper...FedEx MD-10 - FedEx normally doesn't bring these into CLT, but with the higher holiday volumes, we get to see some heavy metal.



US Airways A321 in line for takeoff, with the Charlotte skyline in the background. Those are the lights of the FedEx MD-10 streaking by while landing.



American Airlines A319 ready for takeoff

black mamba

Great work, as usual, John. I particularly like the shot showing the Charlotte skyline.

Happy Holidays,

Tom

Earache

black mamba wrote: »

Great work, as usual, John. I particularly like the shot showing the Charlotte skyline.

Happy Holidays,

Tom

The back-lit windows in that shot, and the light-stars in all views, are very nice!

moose135

Thank you both! Funny, I was using the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 for these, and was shooting at around f/7.1, so I was surprised to see the star bursts. I really haven't used that lens at night like this before, so I wonder if it's a characteristic of the lens. I would have thought I would have needed to be stopped further down to get those star bursts. Guess I'll have to experiment a little more at night with the lens...like I need a reason to shoot at night!