The Aviation Photographer #6

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tio i d e r umme

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p h o t o g r a p h e r

E-Magazine

A viation

The

issue Nr. 6 2018

NATO Ti g er M eet

A f ly i n g c i r c u s ?

SAAB 39 Gripen the smart fighter

swe d ish ar med fo r c es helicopter wing

Tutori al

e d i t i n g : pa r t I I - l i g h t r o o m e d i t i n g : pa r t I I I - N I K C o l l e c t i o n 1

Top S ho t s

from around the world

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THIS ISSUE EDitorial: the last issue

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saab 39 gripen - the smart fighter

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To p s h o t s

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s w e d i s h a r m e d fo r c e s - h e l i c o p t e r w i n g

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top shots

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r e v i e w - N AT O T I G E R M E E T

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t u t o r i a l - e d i t i n g pa r t i I I : N I K C o l l e c t i o n

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EDITORIAL

The last issue

This, the sixth issue of the Aviation Photographer, will be the last one, before the summer hollidays.

We’ll be spending the summer trying to get new material for the fall and winter issues of The Aviation Photographer.

Thus we have ”beefed it up” a bit, with two tutorial articles about editing, that we hope will keep you busy all summer long, as we don’t intend to be back until the autumn, when the air show season is drawing to a close and we’ll have time to write more.

As we always welcome input and ideas of what to write about, please feel free to contact us via e-mail over the summer, with your suggestions, and we will see what we can come up with during the fall and winter.

We hope that we will have some interesting material from this year’s air shows, that we plan on visiting, and hopefully we will get some more interesting guest articles for you as well.

So, enjoy your summer, where ever you are, and we hope you have a fantastic aviation photography season and who knows, perhaps we’ll meet at an airfield somewhere!

Peter Eliasson www.e-pic.se

Jörgen Nilsson www.jn-photo.se 3

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tutorial

editing - part II: lightroom With all the boring stuff done, organizing and meta-tagging our pictures, it is now time to get started with the fun part, the creative part where we do the actual manipulating, or editing, of the pictures.

Again, we want to make it clear that this is NOT a Lightroom tutorial, as we presume that you have a basic working knowledge of Lightroom. This tutorial describes the editing process that we use, or more correctly the process that I, Jörgen, use.

It is NOT the “right way of doing it”, it’s MY way of doing it. There are probably as many processes as there are Lightroom users and the best thing you can do is to find the process that work the best for YOU and your pictures.

Editing is an extension of actually taking the pictures and if you have set your camera up properly before taking your pictures, you will have a much better material to work with when you now start editing them. Having an idea of what type of pictures you wanted to take in the first place will now pay off, as you have (hopefully) weeded out the bad ones and rated the remaining pictures so that you now know what pictures you want to spend time on, editing, and what you want them to look like when you are done editing them.

But before we get started with the actual editing, there are a few things that we need to address.

The first thing is, that Lightroom can’t perform miracles. All image editing software follow the principle of SISO: Shit In, Shit Out, meaning that your editing result can only be as good as the RAW file you import in to Lightroom. I’m sorry if I now ruined your illusions of Lightroom being able to do wonders for your pictures, it just simply can’t. Only you can.

Secondly, all picture editing is more or less destructive to the original RAW file. Any/all editing effects that we apply to a RAW file means that we are manipulating and ”damaging” the picture’s pixels. What this can result in, is that the finished, edited, picture can be so damaged, that it just looks bad and ugly when we’re done with it. One of the hardest thing about editing, is to know when to stop, when you have reached that fine line between a great looking picture and a ruined picture.

But don’t be afraid to experiment, don’t be afraid of “going over the top” because every time that you experiment, you learn something new, things that you will find useful in future editing so, don’t let the ”fear” of over editing a picture stop you from experimenting.

If you surf the Internet and look at aviation pictures, we are pretty sure that you very quickly recognize pictures that are taken by one and the same photographer. The really good Aviation Photographers have created a style of their own and these are the photographers that we all get inspiration from and (to some extend) try to mimic. I’m talking about photographers like Hesja, Kedar Karmarkar, Menno Menes and, in my case, Peter Eliasson, who’s been a great inspiration and mentor for me, to mention just a few. And there are a lot more great aviation photographers out there!

These “unique” styles don’t happen by chance. They are the result of many, many hours in front of the computer, editing and establishing an editing process that they can follow to keep the style and even improve on it over time. Getting inspiration from other aviation photographers is a very good way to find your own style of editing and your own “identity”.

In our humble opinion there are two main types of picture editing • Documentary • Artistic The documentary style means that you stick to the original RAW images as much as possible as you want to show the actual look of the aircraft, as close to the original as possible. We are basically talking about spot-removal, cropping and some light and contrast changes. That’s it.

Then we have the artistic editing, which is basically where you do what you want, to make the picture look as good as possible (in your opinion) and you use all available tricks and editing tools that you have and know.

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tutorial HDR (High Dynamic Range) is one of those tools that is commonly used to enhance the look of your pictures. I was, for quite a while, a self-confessed HDR junkie, simply because I liked the look it created on my picture but I must admit that looking back, I ”might” have taken it a bit too far from time to time. But I learnt a lot from it!

Now, HDR it’s just one of the tools I use from time to time and if I hadn’t spent so much time working with HDR in the past, I would have missed out on that experience and knowledge. So, again, don’t be afraid to experiment.

It’s only you who can decide what style you want to use and what editing you want to do, and that’s why this editing tutorial is meant to serve as inspiration and an example of one way of doing it, but you should adapt parts of it to work for you, to get your pictures looking like you want them to look.

So, let’s move on to the actual editing process.

My editing process is made up by two different steps.

The first, and the one that I will go through here, is the basic editing in Lightroom that will result in a high-resolution TIFF image, that I will use later, when I start the next step, editing in the NIK Collection plug-in. NIK Collection is a free plug-in for Lightroom so if you have Lightroom, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t download and install it.

Every picture is unique in one way or another and that’s the reason why I don’t do batch editing. Every RAW file has a picture waiting to pop out and this is the first step of the actual editing, trying to see the picture within the RAW image. Take a while to simply look at the image and try to ”see the picture”. Twist and turn the image, try different cropping, perhaps it’s a B&W editing that works best, etc, etc.

It is only your imagination that sets the limit to what the result of the picture will be in the end.

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tutorial

For this tutorial, I have decided to use a picture that pose a bit of a challenge, with both dark and bright areas and contrasts.

The EXIF data is a follows: • • • • • •

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mk III Lens: Canon EF 500mm, f/4, IS USM + 1.4x extender = 700 mm ISO: 250 Aperture: f / 5.6 Shutter speed: 1/800 Exposure compensation: + 2/3

You can download this RAW file by using this link, http://bit.ly/2G8nm3E, and work with it as you go through these different editing steps.

The RAW file has been rated as a ***** file and all meta data has been entered.

The ***** rating is based on sharpness, the composition and how interesting the aircraft in the picture is. In this case it’s a SAAB 39C Gripen from the Swedish Air Force, loaded with 2 x Meteor, 2 x AMRAAM and 2 x IRIS-T missiles, making it a rather rare image.

The first thing I do, when I have opened the image in the Develop module of Lightroom is to crop and angle the picture. In most cases, I prefer a 16x9 aspect of my pictures, but it all depends on if the image file allows that format or if it needs a different format, either a preset format or a format that I choose myself. For this picture, it seems that a 16x9 aspect works.

I will also crop the image a bit, to ”get a bit closer” to the aircraft. As I was standing pretty close to the aircraft when the picture was taken, I can still maintain a pretty large image after cropping it. I have a personal ”rule” that I never crop a RAW file to make it smaller than 2500 pixels on the longest side of it.

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tutorial

It seems I also needs to straighten the image up a bit to avoid the aircraft looking like it’s landing uphill.

The aircraft is landing, i.e. it’s moving forward, from right to left so I want to leave a bit of space between the nose of the aircraft and the left side of the image. This “tricks” the eye and brain to think that the plane is moving in that direction.

If you have looked at image editing tutorials on line, you have probably red about the “Rule of Thirds”, where you balance the picture by position parts that you want the viewer to focus on, in the left or right third of the image. In this case, I have chosen the aircraft canopy as the part I want the viewer to focus on, as this is the “eye” of the aircraft and eyes are always interesting to focus on.

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tutorial

Next step of my editing process is to remove spots from the image. It doesn’t matter how well you clean your camera sensor, there will always be spots in your pictures. The higher the aperture the pictures has, the more sports you will see. And there are few things that are as annoying as finding spots in your edited pictures.

By checking the “Visualize Spots” check-box at the bottom left side of Lightroom, you get a black and white view where spots appear very clearly. In this sample, there are one thick and one small spot visible in the cropped image, so I’ll simply use the tool to remove them.

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tutorial Now it’s time to start manipulating the RAW image and make use of all the light data that my camera and lens has saved in to the digital RAW file.

Lightroom is actually designed to have a pretty logic work-flow when it comes to editing, so the best way to start working on your RAW file is to take one section at a time, from top to bottom, starting with the “Basic� section.

Based on my own experience, I have a standard editing setting that I apply to pretty much all pictures, at least those pictures that are taken in daylight.

If you zoom in on the image below you can see the values i use and the effect it has on the picture.

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tutorial Based on what the image looks like, after I have applied these ”standard” values, I adjust them to make sure that I get the best settings for the image that I’m editing, thus I don’t want to use batch-editing as it will not work on every picture.

I recommend that you experiment a lot and change the settings to see what effect the different settings has on the image.

As you can see, it’s a pretty big change and it gives me a picture that has more contrasts and it isn’t as bright as the original. Note that I have not changed Exposure setting of the picture to change the brightness of the sky, I have change the Highlights to bring down the brightness of the sky and in all other bright parts of the image without effecting the darker parts of the image.

This picture was taken at around 10:00 in the morning, in October and the light at the time was actually a bit warmer than what the picture show, so I want to make the picture a bit “warmer” and I do this by changing the Temp setting to a value of 6200. If you move the “slider” at the Temp tool, you will find the value that works for you.

Finding the best balance between the original tone and the warmer tone, not making it look weird or unnatural is the tricky part. Knowing when to stop, is the difficult part.

But in changing this setting, you can see that the color of the grass now is a bit too green for my liking, something I will have to adjust before I save this image in to the TIFF file. Again, finding the balance between what’s good and what just ”too much” require that you take the time to actually look at the picture.

As you can see, whenever you change a setting during this process, it will effect the picture one way or the other so take your time and make sure you get the picture to look like you want it to, befor you save or export it.

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tutorial My next step is to work with the Tone Curves.

If you ask me for a logical reason as to why I use the settings that I do, I couldn’t answer you even if my life depended on it. It’s just something I have learned by trial and error. The objective is to tone down the bright areas of the picture and get a bit more contrast in the picture.

I try to keep these setting as low as possible, rarely going below or above -/+ 15% as I want only settle changes.

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tutorial

With the editing I’ve done so far, the colors are a bit “off” and they need to be adjusted slightly. I do this in the HSL (Hue, Saturation and Luminance) editing section of LR. The first thing I want to do, is to make the grass a bit less green and believe it or not, I do this by reducing the yellow Saturation by -20% and then the grass looks a bit more like grass is supposed to, at least here in Sweden in October.

As this picture was taken in the autumn, the leaf’s on trees and bushes were all red and orange and I want to emphasize this by increasing the red and orange saturation by 25%. This helps adding a little more contrast to the overall picture and a bit more appealing to look at, as the red and orange will draw the attention of whoever is looking at it.

The picture is now starting to look the way I envisioned it when I started the editing and we are now done with the part where we change the color and brightness of the image. Again, I do think that you should experiment with all these settings that I have shown and used here, to see if you have a different opinion when it comes to what you want the picture to look like.

Next we’ll attend to more detailed settings.

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tutorial

Sharpness in our pictures is always something that we strive to get but it’s far from always that we succeed. And don’t be fooled by name “sharpening” of this tool as it’s not so much a tool to make an un-sharp picture sharp, but it makes a sharp image (to a point) a bit more “crisp” and even ”over-crisp” if you over-do it.

Again, here’s a tool where I have learned from experience what settings I prefer to use.

If you zoom in the image to 100% and move the sliders next to “Amount” and ”Detail”, you can see what these settings do to the picture. A word of caution about this tool is in order, as over-doing it on these settings will do more harm than good to the quality of the edited image.

The “Masking” option defines the contours of the objects in the picture, something that becomes usefull later on, in NIK Collection, as it defines “borders” between areas where we want to make more detailed editing. Set this to 80 as minimum.

Noise reduction is a useful when you have an image with high ISO numbers but be ware, it has some drawbacks.

Again, if you zoom in 100% on the image and you start moving the Noise Reduction sliders, you will notice that the higher the number you use, the less details you see. A good area to look at are the thin lines between panels on the aircraft. You will notice that the higher the number used, the less clear the lines will become.

So, I have adapted a very un-scientific method for this setting, a method I actually don’t know if it’s good or not, but it seems to work for me.

If the picture has an ISO number of 100, is use 10 as the Noise Reduction, luminance setting.

If the picture has an ISO number of 160, is use 16 as the Noise Reduction, luminance setting.

See where I’m going with this?

And I use the same value and method on the Noise Reduction, contrast setting.

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tutorial So, what if I have an image with an ISO of 400?

Do I use 40 as the settings value?

In short: No. Don’t use a settings value higher than 25, as it tends to do more bad than good to the image, regardless of how high the ISO numer on the RAW image is.

If you have an image with high ISO numbers and you think there’s too much noise in it, it’s better to keep the picture as close to the original size as possible, as noise tend to be less visible, the larger the image is.

The last thing that I edit in Lightroom is the Lens Correction filters that come with Lightroom.

Any lens that you use, require a bit of correction to compensate for Distortion and Vignetting on the digital file. Just use the default values of the selected lens profile and you should be good to go. In most cases, Lightroom will read this information from the RAW file and select the correct lens, if the profile is available.

Note that some lens correction can make quite visible changes to the picture, so a good piece of advice is to have a look at the image, after the lens correction, and see if you need to make any additional editing corrections to the image before you are done.

And that’s it!

That’s all the editing that I do in Lightroom, as this gives me a good “canvas” to work with in NIK Collection in the next step of my editing process.

All that’s left to do now is to Export the edited picture as a high-resolution TIFF image.

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tutorial I have defined four different ”user presets” in Lightroom, for the four different image formats that I want to export to, during the editing and in this case it’s the first user preset that I use “1. TIFFS för redigering” (“1. TIFFS for editing”). This is the only format i export at this stage of the process.

When I’m done with all the editing of this picture, I will end up with the following picture formats and sizes: • A full-size TIFF in 300 dpi (for large printing) • A full-size JPG in 300 dpi (for printing or high-res publications online) • A JPG with the longest side 2048 px in 200 dpi (for Facebook) If you want, you can create export presets to create pictures that work for specific purposes, like Instagram, Facebook, Flicker etc. Once the pre-set is done, it takes just seconds to export the different formats and sizes you want, of the same picture.

You can see, in the picture below, the export settings that I use for the TIFF I intend to use when editing in NIK Collection.

I’m basically exporting a 300 dpi TIFF image in to a sub folder called “TIFF NIK” and I rename the file by adding “_NIK_” to the file name. I do this, so I can identify this image as a file that I have edited in Lightroom and is ready for processing in NIK Collection.

Next, I start all over again, with the next RAW image that I want to edit and I keep doing this, until I have a bunch of TIFF images ready for editing in NIK Collection.

In preparation for the next part of the editing tutorial, I strongly recommend that you download and install the NIK Collection program, that you can find here: https://www.google.com/nikcollection/.

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saab 39 gripen

the sm ar t f ig h t e r

SAAB 39 Gripen (“Griffin” in English), Swedish Air Force designation JAS 39A/B/C/D, is a fourth generation multirole fighter aircraft manufactured by the Swedish Aerospace company SAAB and it’s was one of the first fighter aircraft that could be used as a fighter-, attack- and reconnaissance platform and switch in to these different roles midflight, by the flick of a switch. This ability is what gives the aircraft its designation JAS, “Jakt, Attack, Spaning” (Fighter, Attack, Reconnaissance).

In 1982 the Swedish Government decided that a new fighter aircraft was to be built, as replacement for the SAAB 35 Draken and SAAB 37 Viggen. The first flight of the SAAB 39 Gripen took place December 9th 1988 and the aircraft became operational with the Swedish Air Force in June 1996.

During the development and testing of the aircraft, two rather spectacular and televised crashes took place, one as the aircraft was landing at the SAAB air filed in Linköping and the other during a display flight over downtown Stockholm.

Miraculously, no one was killed in either crash. Both crashes were caused by “pilot induced oscillation”, displaying the difficulties of an aerodynamically instable construction and the control system required.

The first versions of the SAAB 39 Gripen aircraft to be put in to active service in the Swedish Air Force was the single seater 39A and the two seater trainer, 39B, versions. A total of 104 aircraft of the A model and 14 of the B model was built.

December 13th 2012, saw the last flight of the SAAB 39A/B versions as they were replaced with the current 39C/D version.

The upgrade to the C version meant that the aircraft became NATO compatible, including better electronics and armaments and air-to-air refueling capability. The two seater D version got the same upgrades but besides the fact that the D version is a two seater, the main difference is that it doesn’t have a built in gun.

The SAAB 39 Gripen aircraft may not be the biggest, fastest and most powerful fighter aircraft in the world, but the combination of good performance and a very good situational awareness system that enables the pilot to know what threats there are, not only in his vicinity but in the vicinity of other SAAB 39 aircraft in the air, the system is a very potent and a competitive adversary for most other fighter aircraft.

In July 2016, SAAB 39 Gripen of the Swedish Air Force became the first country in the world to put the MBDA Meteor missile in to active service, thus changing the balance of A2A combat in Europe. The combination of the SAAB 39 C/D (and the future E version) and the MBDA Meteor missile has thus been nicknamed “The Gamechanger”.

June 15th 2017 was the date when the next generation of the SAAB 39 system took to the sky; the E version. Though it looks very similar to the C version, the E is a more or less brand new aircraft that is bigger, has a more powerful engine and can carry more fuel and weapons than its predecessors.

There are also plans for a Sea Gripen, capable of aircraft carrier operations, but to this date it seems it’s only Brazil who is interested in this version and no prototype has been built.

Source: Wikipedia, SAAB, FMV. Technical data SAAB 39 Gripen Length: Width: Height: Weight, empty: Max take-off weight: Engine: Thrust wo/w Afterburner: Max. speed:

39A 14,1 m 8,4 m

39B 14,8 m 8,4 m

39C 14,1 m 8,4 m

39D 14,8 m 8,4 m

39E 15,2 m 8,6 m

4,5 m 6 700 Kg 12 700 Kg RM 12 54 kN / 80 kN Mach 2

4,5 m 7 000 Kg 12 700 Kg RM 12 54 kN / 80 kN Mach 2

4,5 m 6 800 Kg 14 000 Kg RM 12 54 kN / 80 kN Mach 2

4,5 m 7 100 Kg 14 000 Kg RM 12 54 kN / 80 kN Mach 2

4,5 m 8 000 Kg 16 500 Kg GF F414G 58 kN / 98 kN Mach 2

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saab 39 gripen

SAAB 39C Gripen - Photographer: Peter Eliasson - e-pic.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS + 1.4x - 700 mm - ISO 400 - f/5.6 - 1/400)

SAAB 39C Gripen - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS + 1.4x - 700 mm - ISO 200 - f/5.6 - 1/1600) 17

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saab 39 gripen

SAAB 39C Gripen - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS + 1.4x - 700 mm - ISO 200 - f/5.6 - 1/800)

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saab 39 gripen

SAAB 39D Gripen - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS + 1.4x - 700 mm - ISO 400 - f/5.6 - 1/800)

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saab 39 gripen

Czech Air Force SAAB 39C Gripen - Photographer: Peter Eliasson - e-pic.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x - 700 mm - ISO 320 - f/10 - 1/1000)

Swedish Air Force SAAB 39C Gripen - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x - 700 mm - ISO 200 - f/6.3 - 1/1600) 22

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saab 39 gripen

SAAB 39E Gripen - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM - 24 mm - ISO 800 - f/4 - 1/125)

H ungarian Air Force SAAB 39D Gripen - Photo grapher: Peter Eliasson - e-pic.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM - 500 mm - ISO 100 - f/5 - 1/1250) 23

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SAAB 39 Gripen

SAAB 39C Gripen - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS + 1.4x - 700 mm - ISO 320 - f/5.6 - 1/800)

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top shots

Mil Mi-28N Havoc - Photographer: Peter Eliasson - e-pic.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS + 1.4x - 700.0 mm - ISO 100 - f/10 - 1/125)

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29M-2 - Photographer: Peter Eliasson - e-pic.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x - 700 mm - ISO 160 - f/5.6 - 1/1250) 26

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top shots

SAAB Safir pilot Niklas Eriksson before take-off - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM - 300.0 mm - ISO 100 - f/10 - 1/125)

Mirage 2000N Ramex Delta - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS + 1.4x - 700.0 mm - ISO 250 - f/5.6 - 1/1600) 27

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s w e d i s h a r m e d fo r c e s

heli c op te r w in g

”The Armed Forces’ helicopter fleet provides Sweden with a vital degree of mobility and flexibility – a valuable resource in rescue, transport and reconnaissance missions.”

The Swedish Armed Forces’s helicopter Wing has its HQ at Malmen air base, in Linköping, Sweden, but has two detatchements, one in Luleå, in Northern Sweden, and one in Ronneby, in the south-east part of Sweden and they operate three types of helicopters: • Helicopter 14 (Hkp 14) - NH-Industries/Eurocopter NH90 • Helicopter 15 (Hkp 15) - AgustaWestland A109 • Helicopter 16 (Hkp 16) - UH-60M Blackhawk The Wing supports both the Swedish Army, Navy and Air Force and is a resource that can also be used by civilian government organizations like the Police. As the Wing is utilized by so many different organizations, they are equipped and trained to operate in almost any kind of terrain and conditions.

Besides being used in Sweden, the Wing has also served with the Swedish Armed Forces deployment in Afghanistan and with the Swedish Navy in the Gulf of Aden , during the EU Operation Atalanta.

Swedish Armed Forces UH-60M Blackhawk (Hkp 16) - Photographer: Jörgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS + 1.4x - 700.0 mm - ISO 100 - f/11 - 1/160)

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s w e d i s h a r m e d fo r c e s

Swedish Armed Forces A109 (Hkp 15A) - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM - 500 mm - ISO 100 - f/10 - 1/200)

Swedish Armed Forces NH90 (Hkp 14) - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x -700 mm - ISO 100 - f/7.1 - 1/160) 29

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s w e d i s h a r m e d fo r c e s

Swedish Armed Forces UH-60M Blackhawk (Hkp 16) - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 70D - Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM - 83 mm - ISO 100 - f/16 - 1/50) 30

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s w e d i s h a r m e d fo r c e s

Swedish Armed Forces A109 (Hkp 15A) - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x - 700 mm - ISO 640 - f/5.6 - 1/160)

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s w e d i s h a r m e d fo r c e s

Swedish Armed Forces NH90 (Hkp 14) - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x - 700 mm - ISO 100 - f/10 - 1/100)

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s w e d i s h a r m e d fo r c e s

Swedish Armed Forces A109 (Hkp 15B) - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x - 700 mm - ISO 100 - f/8 - 1/200)

Swedish Armed Forces UH-60M (Hkp 16) - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x - 700 mm - ISO 100 - f/6.3 - 1/400) 36

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s w e d i s h a r m e d fo r c e s

Swedish Armed Forces NH90 (Hkp 14) and UH-60M (Hkp 16) - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM - 260 mm - ISO 100 - f/11 - 1/100)

You can follow the the Helicopter Wing, and its units , in social media via the following accounts: Unit Helicopter Wing Black Hawk unit NH90 / Hkp 14 unit

Facebook @hkpflj

Instagram @helikopterflottiljen @svarthok @whitefox_hkp14

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Twitter @Hkpflj

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top shot

Falcons Of Russia, Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker - Photographer: Peter Eliasson - e-pic.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x - 100 mm - ISO 100 - f/25 - 1/1250) 38

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To p s h o t

Finnish Air Force McDonnell Douglas F-18C Hornet - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS - 500.0 mm - ISO 100 - f/5 - 1/320)

USAF Thunderbirds - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - EF70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM - 300.0 mm - ISO 100 - f/8 - 1/500)

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To p s h o t

Chendu J-10 - Photographer: Peter Eliasson - e-pic.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x - 700.0 mm - ISO 800 - f/6.3 - 1/1000)

North American P-51D Mustang - Photographer: Peter Eliasson - e-pic.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM + 1.4x - 840.0 mm - ISO 100 - f/11 - 1/200) 41

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N AT O T i g e r m e e t

a fly i ng cir c u s ?

Take 24 full member and 10 honorary member squadrons from different NATO Air Forces (and a few other countries), ad a pinch of Public Relations work, sprinkle with some energy and creativity of competitive Air Force personnel from around the world, then move this “stew” around different European countries once a year and you have something that looks like a flying circus.

But don’t be fooled by the seemingly laid back, “wild and crazy” appearance of both aircraft, personnel and some additional equipment, as the NATO Tiger Meet is an annually occurring Air Force exercise where the objective is to promote solidarity between NATO Air Forces and do some PR for NATO in Europe. And we Aviation Photographers get to enjoy this spectacle as they host “spotter days” at these events, where it’s all about showing off and compete in who can be the most Tiger.

But let’s take it from the beginning.

Promoted by the French Defense minister, The NATO Tiger Association, or the Association of Tiger Squadrons was established back in 1961 to serve as an opportunity for NATO Air Forces to share ideas and experiences and to serve a a public relations exercise for NATO at the same time. The common denominator between the member squadrons is that they all have a tiger as part of their squadron crest.

The first NATO Tiger Meet (NTM) was held in Woodbridge, UK hosted by the USAF 79th Fighter Squadron, July 19-20, 1961.

For more detailed information about the NATO Tiger Meet, I recommend a visit to their website: https://www.natotigers.org

Czech Air Force SAAB 39C Gripen - Photographer: Jörgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 70D - Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM - 70 mm - ISO 100 - f/10 - 1/320)

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N AT O T i g e r m e e t

Belgian Air Force C-130 and ”spotters” - Photographer: Jörgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 70D - Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM - 150 mm - ISO 100 - f/18 - 1/80)

The 2018 NATO Tiger Meet was held at Poznan-Krzesiny AB in Poland, starting May 14th and ending May 25th with some 20 different squadrons participating. This is a very good example of what’s happened in Europe since the end of the 1980’s where a country, previously a Warsaw Pact member, is hosting a NATO exercise.

Visiting a NATO Tiger Meet should be on every military aviation photographer’s bucket list as it is a very good photo opportunity where you are sure to get some cracking shots. As the Spotter Day(s) organized is a PR event for NATO, they do go “all in” to make this a good event for us photo geeks, as the different squadrons compete in being the most Tiger.

This includes some spectacular aircraft liveries and other Tiger related theme on people and vehicles.

You should also be aware that the NATO Tiger Meet isn’t an air show, where you just show up, pay an entrance fee and then take pictures all day long. It is a military exercise, and you are entering a military Air Force base, so to get in, you need to be per-registered and there will be security checks when entering the base.

To preregister for the NTM, you visit the NATO Tigers website (https://www.natotigers.org) and follow the instructions for registration when it becomes available.

What can you expect to see at a NATO Tiger Meet?

Take-offs and landings is the name of the game, with some added fly-by and touch and goes and in most cases, some taxiing close to the photographers. Since we are talking about Air Force pilots, who all LOVE to have their picture taken, you will not be disappointed over their efforts to ensure that you get some good shots of them.

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N AT O T i g e r m e e t

Belgian Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon - Photographer: Jörgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS -500mm - ISO 125 - f/4 - 1/1000)

If merchandising is something you are in to, like T-shirts, patches, stickers etc. then I’m sure you’ll enjoy the NTM as pretty much all participating squadrons offer some kind of “shop” where you can buy pretty much all the merchandising you can think of.

They will also make sure that there are something to eat and drink available for purchase at the event.

The NATO Tiger Meet is a popular events with a lot of people attending, so to get a good photo spot, you need to get there early and prepair to ”hurry up to wait”.

As you will be entering a military base, there will be security checks when entering and these checks tend to take a while to get through. Be patient and relax and let it take what ever time it takes as the security checks are there for everones safety.

Facts, NATO Tiger Meet Website:

https://www.natotigers.org/

When:

Once a year

Where:

New location each year. Check website for next year’s location

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N AT O T i g e r m e e t

Turkish Air Force F-16 Falcon - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS - 500mm - ISO 100 - f/10 - 1/250)

French Army Aerospatiale SA-342M Gazelle - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 70D - Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM - 100mm - ISO 100 - f/16 - 1/100) 45

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N AT O T i g e r m e e t

Spanish Air Force F/A-18 Hornet - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS + 1.4x - 700mm - ISO 100 - f/5.6 - 1/800)

Luftwaffe Eurofighter EF-2000 - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS - 500mm - ISO 100 - f/7.1 - 1/320) 46

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N AT O T i g e r m e e t

Czech Air Force SAAB 39C Gripen - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (Canon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS - 500mm - ISO 100 - f/5 - 1/1250)

Greek Air Force F-16 Falcon - Photographer: Jรถrgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se (C anon EOS 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS + 1.4x - 700mm - ISO 160 - f/6.3 - 1/1600) 47

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tutorial e d i t i n g pa r t i I i : N I K C o l l e c t i o n

Time for the third and final part of the image editing tutorial, where we look at the final detailing and touches that I do in the NIK Collection plug-in.

If we would try and explain what NIK Collection is, we’d say that it’s a software where many of the features in Lightroom (LR) has been split up in to seven different modules, providing us with an easier way to control partial editing of a picture.

As we move along with this tutorial you’ll (hopefully) understand what it is we are talking about.

Again, we want to make it clear that this is NOT a Lightroom or NIK Collection tutorial, as we presume that you have a basic knowledge about how these software works.

This will be a rather long tutorial with a bunch of step-by-step instructions with pictures and what we are showing you here, is just one way of doing it. We hope this tutorial will give you an understanding of what you can do in NIK Collection and that you take this knowledge and develop your very own editing technique.

In the previous part of this tutorial, we created a high-resolution TIFF image in Lightroom, with the basic edit of the image. It is now time to import that image in to Lightroom and start editing it in NIK Collection.

So why did I create a TIFF copy in LR? Why didn’t I just do all the editing in LR directly?

It is possible to do that, to edit the RAW image directly in NIK Collection, but the result of that will be that NIK creates and saves a TIFF copy every time you want to edit the RAW file in each of the seven modules. So, you’ll end up with up to seven TIFF copies of each RAW image, if you use all NIK modules, saved on your hard drive and that will get a bit confusing in the long run.

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tutorial The way I have done it means that you will only have one TIFF copy to work with, that you edit (and hopefully improve on) each time you use it in a NIK module. The downside of this is that you can’t undo any of the NIK edits once you have saved the file, you will have to go back and start over again. That’s why it’s important that you take your time and make sure you have done the right things with your picture before you save the file.

As we have mentioned in the past editing tutorial, all editing that you do to a image-file is destructive and NIK has the power to really screw your pictures up, if you are not careful. It also has the power to make a picture a little more interesting to look at, if used correctly.

To access the NIK Collection modules, click on “Photo” → “Edit In” and you will see a drop-down menu with all the NIK Collection modules and all other software you have installed, that you can use to edit a picture via LR. I always start the process by running the picture through the module Dfine 2, a noise reduction module that removes some of the unwanted noise in the image.

I willingly admit that it’s very difficult to see what this module does to the image quality but the way I see it, it does more good than harm, so I always run the image through this module just to know that I’ve done what I can, to remove noise from it.

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tutorial

Once I have selected Dfine 2, the program will ask if you want to edit a Copy With Lightroom Adjustments, a Copy or the Original file and we want to edit the Original. So check that option and click Edit.

Let Define 2 process the image and once it’s done, just click the SAVE button. There are some adjustments you can do in this module, and to find out what they are, have a look at the NIK Collection tutorials and Help files.

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tutorial

The next NIK Module that I use is the one called “Viveza 2” and here’s when the fun starts as this is where we can start to effect the look of the image (or do some real damage).

Again, select to edit the Original file and click Edit to get started.

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tutorial

In this module there are a number of things we can adjust, like Brightness, Contrast and Saturation, to mention a few.

But the neat thing is that we can adjust these things in different spots of the image. We can make defined areas darker or brighter, more saturated or add some structure and contrast.

The first thing I want to do, is to darken the grass and reduce the saturation a bit. So I have added a Control point to a part of the grass and I have adjusted the brightness and saturation with -15%. These changes will affect the area within the radius and all pixels that has the same color as the one marked with the Control point. In the Loupe window, down on the right-hand side, you can see the effect of the change in that area.

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tutorial I usually try to make these editing changes as subtle as possible, keeping the changed values between ± 25%, unless I get in to a creative mode and go crazy with the editing, just for the fun of it. It’s important to have fun, while you do this!

Once you have placed and configured the first Control point, place the cursor on the Control point, hold down the Alt key and click, and you have created a copy of the Control point that you can now drag and place in other areas of the grass.

This is a quick and easy way to get the same settings on multiple Control points on your image.

I recommend that you don’t make these Control points too small, as it will look like spots that are darker or brighter in the image. You should also let Control points that has the same settings over-lap each other, to get the same effect in larger areas of the image that you want to manipulate.

In the Viveza 2 module, there is one thing I recommend that you keep an eye on when using it, and that is the Contrast and Structure settings, especially when used around very dark areas, like the wheels and tires. If you aren’t careful, you will get dark ”shadows” around these areas and in my opinion, that doesn’t look nice. So if I see signs of that ”shadow”, I try to place a neutral Control point over these areas to try and reduce the ”shadow”.

If you look closely at my sample image, you can actually see those darker areas around the main landing gear on the aircraft.

If you don’t try and reduce this ”shading” now, they will most likely become more visible in the coming editing steps of this process.

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tutorial

If you check the “Show / Hide selection for all Control points” you will get a view that shows what areas of the picture that your Control points effect. The brighter the area, the more effect it has. As you can see in in the picture above, a few of the Control points that I have added, effects the airframe of the aircraft and I don’t want that. So I can place a Control point on these effected areas and keep them neutral, to remove the effect from the original Control point.

The next thing I want to edit in the picture is the trees & bushes in the background as I want to darken them down. So, I place a number of Control points where I set Brightness to -25%. By doing this, I also add some more saturation to these areas.

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Darkening the trees and bushes in the background has affected the brightness of the aircraft, and that’s why I place a number of neutral Control points on the aircraft, to remove the darkening effect on it.

So, I am not making the aircraft brighter, to make it ”pop” and get some depth in to the picture, I’m darkening the background a bit, to make the air craft stand out a bit. It’s always better to darken areas of a picture than to brighten them up, as you’ll most likely end up with a lot of noise in the brightened areas, especially if you are trying to brighten darker areas.

I add the control points and effects that I want for the larger image and when I’m happy with those, it’s time to focus on the details. You’d be surprised how big a difference editing a few small details can make to a picture so again, it’s worth the extra time to really look at the image and see what effects, big or small, that you think the picture needs, to look its best.

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tutorial

If you have red the previous parts of this tutorial, you have probably seen that we’ve said that the canopy is the eye of the aircraft. I want to give this eye a bit more contrast to draw attention to it, just like some men and women use mascara and eyeliners to reinforce the lines around the eyes.

So I add Control points on the dark areas of the canopy and reduce the brightness with -20%, to tone it down a bit. If you double-click the image, it will automatically zoom in to a 100% view, making it a bit easier to place the Control points in these small areas.

Note that adding a bit of darkness to the canopy can create some ”shadows” in brighter areas outside the canopy, so make sure you get rid of those by using a neutral Control point in that area.

Small, subtle changes has a bigger impact on the whole image than you think and that’s why it’s good to pay attention to these small but important details when you edit your images.

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When I’m done with the darkening Control points, I place a neutral Control point in the pilots face, to make it “pop” a bit.

When I’m happy with the location of all my Control points, I do a final check to make sure it looks ok and then I click SAVE.

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tutorial

With the editing that you’ve now done, you have darkened the background a bit and made the aircraft “stand out” a bit, to get some depth in the image.

The next NIK Module I’m going to use is the “Color Efex Pro 4” and this is a module that has a lot of different “effects” or “Filters” that can be used on the image. Again I’m going to issue a word of caution here: With all these “Filters” available, you can also screw a picture up, by using too much and too many of them. I do encourage you to try them all, but know that they, in many cases, can do more bad than good to your image.

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As you can see in this screen shot, I only have six different effects, as favorites, that I use with some regularity and the first one, the one I use the most, “Detail Extractor” is applied already when the pictures is opened in the Module.

In this case I have been very moderate, only applying +15% Detail extractor and Contrast and that doesn’t impact the picture too much. Try changing the values and see what happens to the picture and find the settings that you think work best.

Also, in this module you can add Control points to effect just parts of the image to get a better control of your editing, like you did in Viveza 2.

Pay close attention to areas around black/dark parts of the image, like around tires, to make sure you avoid the ”shadow areas” that you tend to get there when using this filter. Place neutral Control point on them and they usually ”fade away”.

I usually try to neutralize the effects on grass and trees as they look un-natural if there’s too much structure in those areas. It’s the airframe of the aircraft and the hear haze from the engine that I want to try and emphasize in this filter.

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When I’m happy with the settings in this Filter, I add another filter by simply clicking the “+ Add Filter” button.

The Filter I want to use next is “Polarization”.

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This filter has three pre-sets; Subtle, Medium and Strong and I apply the one that I think look best for this image. Once applied, you can edit the settings of the pre-set if you’re not happy with the result.

The next Filter I want to use is the “Graduate Filter” and I want to use this to give the sky behind the aircraft a bit of color.

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tutorial

By applying one of the four pre-sets, the one with a “coffee tone�, I match the over all color tone of the picture. But as you can see, the applied filter needs a bit more tweaking, to look ok.

First, I don’t want the to have the tail of the aircraft toned in the same color as the sky, so I place a Control point with 0% opacity on the tail.

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Next I reduce the opacity on the whole gradient toning, to 35% to make it blend in to the picture.

The next filter I want to use is “Contrast only” filter. Don’t forget to click the “+ Add Filter” button before you apply the filter.

The first thing I do is to set all values to 0% so I can adjust the levels to the values I think look the best.

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The last Filter I add, is the “Darken / Lighten Center” Filter. Again, don’t forget to click the “+ Add Filter” button before you apply the filter.

I set the Shape to “2” and reduce Center Luminosity to 15% and the Border Luminosity to -36%. Since I want the people who look at this picture to first focus on the canopy, so I place the Center of the lightened center on the canopy.

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I can also use the “- Control point” to enlarge the center and “shape it” a bit, to follow the aircraft couture. I save the image and when the file is saved, the Module closes.

When I have saved the changes I’ve made in ”Color Efex Pro 4” I’m done with that module and are ready to move on to the next step of my process.

The next step is to run the image through the Dfine 2 Module again, to remove any noise that might have occurred when I have used all these Filters. It’s sort of a ”fine polish” of the image.

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Time for the last final touches.

I make some small adjustments in Contrast, Clarity and Vibrance in the Basic module of LR, just to make the picture “pop” a little more.

There are no set values or default settings here, it’s all up to you and your eye, to give the image that final touch.

As you have seen, many of my editing settings are based on ”set” numbers and percentages and then I adjust those numbers and percentages to get the ”look” that I’m looking for, in the image. That ”look” is something that I have had in my mind even before I started to edit the image and I try to edit the image accordingly.

So, you can actually talk about two different editing strategies: • A planned strategy, where you have a mental picture of what you want your finished image to look like • A creative strategy, where you edit the picture as you go along, to end up with what ever you think looks good.

There is no right or wrong way of doing this, there only the way that leads to an image that you think look good in the end.

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With the editing done, it’s time to export the image to the different file formats that I use. I have defined three different User Presets for exporting images from the TIFF file.

• High resolution TIFFs: Full size, 300 DPI • JPG 2048px 200 dpi: Longest side has 2048 px, 200 dpi. This is for Facebook.

• JPG 300 dpi – Full Size – A full size JPG in 300 DPI This is enough for my needs, but you can create these pre-sets for any specific format you need.

Note, that the High resolution TIFFs: Full size, 300 DPI becomes a rather large image file on your hard drive and to be honest, I haven’t had muchuse for those files. But my reasoning is that with that file, I can cover even larger print-outs and since I have already done all the editing of the image, I can might as well save a large copy and be done with it.

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My three user pre-sets for exporting image copies of the original TIFF image.

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Now that we have finished with the editing of this picture, we no longer have any need for the original TIFF file, so we can delete it and move on to the next picture that we want to edit.

The last step in my editing process, is to sharpen the JPG file that has a longest side of 2048 pixels, 200 dpi, exported to be posted on Facebook. This is the only JPG file I sharpen, as it’s the only file I know what I’m going to with. The high resolution, full size JPG file will most likely be used for printing, so I wait with the sharpening of this copy until I know what it’s going to be used for.

If you look at the setting in the sharpening module we’ll be using, you can see that you can sharpen a picture for digital use or for printing, with different types of printing technique. As printed copies of an image will most likely end up being framed and hung on a wall, sharpening these larger images is usually not needed, as whoever watches it won’t be that close to it to notice those ”sharp” (more crisp) details.

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tutorial To do the sharpening, I first import the JPG file(s) that I want to work with, as I can do this step on multiple files in one go.

In this case, I only have one file to work with.

In the library module of LR, mark the file(s) you want to sharpen and then select the NIK module �Sharpner Pro 3: Output sharpner�.

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As in all these steps, it is the original file that we want to work on.

The default setting in the ”Sharpner Pro 3: Output sharpner” is 50%, but if you look closely at the picture you will see that it is a bit too ”crisp”, with a bright outline along contrasting edges and this is something that we want to avoid. So I reduce the value to somewhere between 25% - 30%, which ever makes it look best.

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tutorial If I had multiple images selected, I click the ”Next” button until I’m done with all the image files and I can Save All. If it’s just one image file you are working on, you click ”Save”.

When I’ve sharpened all the image files, I run them all through the module ”Dfine 2” again, to get rid of any noise created by the sharpening. It’s the same thing here, you can select multiple image files and select to Edit them in ”Dfine 2” and you can then run them through the noise reduction one image at a time, until you’ve done them all and can ”Save All”.

And that’s the whole editing process!

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tutorial You can now add your watermark or logo and publish your work on social media and/or your website.

The reason why I add my watermark AFTER I do the sharpening, is that the sharpening process will ”sharpen” or ”crisp” your watermark as well, making it look really bad.

I add my watermark in Photoshop, simply because I find it the easiest to work with for this purpose.

Watermarks is something that most people seem to hate, especially if you place it in such a way that it covers part of the aircraft in any way, as it makes it a little more difficult to download and use a picture without giving credit to the photographer.

IMHO it doesn’t matter if a picture is stunningly great or just plain ugly, the photographer should always get due credit if used in a public context and payment if the image is used in any form of commercial context.

I don’t get many request for my images to be used in commercial applications like books or adds, but when I do, my ”favorite” ones are those where they want to use the image(s) in a book, and they say ”I can’t pay you, but you’ll get photo credit with your name as compensation”. Those always cracks me up.

One way of using a watermark a bit more discrete is to write your name close to the canopy of the aircraft, and tone it in such a way that it blends in with the background a bit. If you do it this way, it doesn’t stand out as much as a large watermark, and you can in many cases detect if someone is using your image and they have tried to remove your watermark from the picture.

I would recommend doing this in Photoshop (or other image editing software) after you’ve sharpened the image.

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tutorial

So how big is the difference between the image we started with and the result of the editing?

Well, it might be difficult to see in detail in the images above, but if you download the image files used in the tutorial you will see the difference more clearly. What you will find, is that the difference isn’t all that big, as I have tried to keep the editing as subtle as possible in this example. As we have stated a couple of times, there are no limits, rules and regulation for editing, it’s only your own creativity and imagination that set the limits.

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Finnish Air Force F-18C Hornet - photographer: Jörgen Nilsson - jn-photo.se Canon EO S 5D Mark III - Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS + 1.4x - 700.0 mm - f/5.6 - 1/1600 - ISO 200

Fa s t & Lo w A c t i o n P h o t o g r a py S w e d e n H B Publishers:

Jörgen Nilsson Peter Eliasson

E-mail: 75E - m a i l :

jnproduction@bredband.net peter.eliasson@e-pic.se

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