Dr Who

So I finally watched the 50th anniversary of Dr Who. And it was just fantastic. Good stuff BBC and Steven Moffat!

And a big thanks to UKTV here on sky. Since January, they’ve dedicated each month to a Dr starting with William Hartnell and leading up to the anniversary episode last weekend. I’ve never seen some of the older Doctor’s so it was great to see them. Later episodes on Doctors I do remember bought back memories of hiding behind the couch terrified (just like every other kid!).

But back to the 50th anniversary episode….. the story was great, but the banter between the 3 Doctors was just fantastic. The nods to the older Doctors and companions was also well done…. the curator, the Bad Wolf (and David Tennat’s look when he realised who the Bad Wolf was) and very colourful scarves. Who doesn’t like a fez?

[SPOILER ALERT}

With Gallifrey being “saved”, I do feel the Doctor will have lost his darker side which has been a key part of the character.

It’ll be interesting to see where Moffat and the other writers take Dr Who without the Doctors emotions on destroying Gallifrey.

Bring on Peter Capaldi and the Christmas special! I for one am looking forward to it.

Bad Influences

So I’ve decided that Lee and Rob are bad influences….

By doing things like getting me into photography….. emailing me about well priced, good quality lenses…… heading along to photography shops with me….. and watching me spend some money :)

Not that it’s all that hard to lead me astray….

So after recommendations from the guys, reading some reviews and having a play this afternoon…. I’ve bought a new lens. Have been wanting a longer zoom lens for airshows and wildlife photography, but couldn’t justify the cost of them.

That’s until the Sigma range of lenses were pointed out to me. Much cheaper and pretty good quality by all accounts.

I’m now the proud owner of one of these:

 

Sigma 150-500mm f5-6.3 APO EX DG HSM OS for EOS

 

Am looking forward to trying it out. So if its nice tomorrow, I’ll pop over to Ardmore after gaming to have more of a play. Since the next airshow we’re looking at attending isn’t until late Jan, I think maybe I’ll to see if the guys want to do some wildlife shoots.

75yrs of that unique sound…..

…..of Harvards. To celebrate there was another open day at Ardmore Airport on Sunday, so we popped along to spend the day and take a few photos. The weather was looking pretty dodgy right up to Friday when someone seemed to flick a switch and the sun came out! The end result… a long hot sunny weekend. Perfect for an airshow :)

On arrival I snapped a few pics of the static display using my 55mm lenses and then changed to my 250mm lenses. Due to the bright sunshine, I used my polarising lenses and set the camera to Tv 1/200 and iso 400. Throughout, the day I remembered to adjust the polarising lenses position to account for the sun movement, but wonder if I should have used a lower iso?

Anyway on to the pics…. Since the day was all about the Harvard, I’ll start there. 9 were flying and it was great to see them all up in the air. Such a great classic plane.

 

 

   

         

Off course there were some other aircraft too…. it wouldn’t be an airshow without some crazy aerobatics. 3 different aircraft were on display throughout the day (Giles, Zlin, MX2).

 

I got quite a cool shadow effect on this one with the sun…


You can tell when someone is having fun…. like when they do “doughnuts” in their MX2 :)

 

Ryan & Chipmunk. I haven’t seen the Ryan flying before. It’s a nice little aircraft.

 

 

One of the other old trainers (CT4)…

 

Tiger Moths.

 

The jets. L-39 and Strikemaster. I was hoping to get some good pictures of the vapour trail, but as this display was around midday…. I struggled with the light.

        

 

Yak 52’s.

 

P-40 & Spitfire.

  

 

M.A.S.H 4077th chopper…

 

Whoever came up with the idea of displaying some Mustang’s with the P-51… nice work! Just a shame the P-51 wasn’t flying….

 

 

Finally… the big battle. With the 250mm lenses on and the area slightly more crowded, I just focused on grabbing a couple more interesting shots of the battle. I’ve converted these to black and white as I think it adds to the atmosphere.

 

The award for “Best Death Scene” in a re-enactment goes to this guy…

 

So to finish off… a few shots of the Harvards as the day ended. Bringing to close another great day out. Thanks to Ardmore and the Warbirds Association!

 

 

Total photo count = 2114 :)

 

Check out Rob’s blog for a lot more pics! - http://paintedaddiction.blogspot.co.nz/