Message posted by lone wolf on August 06, 2003 at 19:08:20 PST:

You can use a 400mm lens with a few caveats. You will not get full frame photos of the fighter jets, that is a given. However, if your 400mm lens is sharp (translation: not a zoom lens or a 200mm with a 2x teleconverter), your film is sharp (Fuji Provia 100F or perhaps the new Kodak E100G), and you scan the film rather than scan a drug store 4x6 print, you can get decent shots. It is far cheaper to buy a 4000 dpi film scanner than a good 600mm or 800mm lens. I've seen the older Polaroid and Artixscan 4000 dpi film scanners go for $400 to $500 new, though they were the 12 bit models that were closed out. Most on-line photostores won't even publish a price for a decent 600mm lens, but they are around $8k, so it's not even a contest.

The alternative to film scanning is to have the photos professionally printed, enlarging the image so it contains just the plane and some background. This won't be cheap.

In Reply to: NO TRESPASSING at Nellis posted by Jim Bob on August 06, 2003 at 11:46:15 PST:

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