Hello again IF community, last time this year I think it would be a good idea to drop another spotting topic. Night spotting is so cool with light and everything being visible, here’s one last 2024 night from Switzerland!
Short answer: because GVA has a lot of lights and the runway is close to the terminal
Technical answer: It is way easier to pull detail out of a subject that has a bit of ambient light on it than a subject that is totally dark. Our cameras are highly capable of high ISO, but they’re not capable of high ISO in shadow. The problem is that night spotting is generally in complete shadow since runways and the sky aren’t floodlit. An example is when I tried a beach spot at BCN before sunrise (absolutely 0 ambient light), my a7iii could barely lock and even when it did the photo was so bad you could barely make out the aircraft type (ISO32k). Then I went to YYZ and spotted this AF A350 at ISO32k.
While YYZ doesn’t have a ton of ambient light, there is a little on virtue of being in a populated area which helps me recover detail.
GVA has a nice setup since the runway is so close to the terminal. This means floodlight reaches the runway (at least in the camera’s eyes) and helps pull out detail. You can tell bc the whites on the plane are just as bright as the whites on the taxiway planes. If you get a place with little to no floodlights you end up with something like this where the fuselage is of a similar gamma to the background.
Actually not exactly where I took this one, but I get your point, it was in the north part not near any building. Hopefully there was road light but that’s all.
