I thought I would give the Rydges Hotel new observation deck a go, so I headed out yesterday after lunch for 3 hours of shooting between 2pm and 5pm. If you park in the Airport Car Park, Rydges will validate your parking ticket for 50% off, and it is only a very short walk to the hotel.
Just checkin with reception and pay your $10, they will give you a card for a free coffee at the cafe/bar, and escort you to the elevator and up to the Dreamliner Room and observation deck. There are toilets as you exit the elevator, and the Dreamliner room is about 15x5Mtr with windows looking out over the airport. The outside deck is small, there were eight of us there yesterday and that's about the max for shooting, but it has an exceptional view of the airport, particularly 16R/34L operations. You can shoot final approaches to 16R with the city as a background, shoot the 16R touchdown area, or shoot right down the bay for 16R departures. There is a clear view to the cargo and Qantas apron areas. You could also probably shoot Runway 25 Arrivals through to just past the Runway 25 intersection.
Runway 34L was operational initially, then they changed to 16R. Using Google earth, the distance from the observation deck to the centreline of Runway16R is approx 536Mtr, and to the 16R/25 intersection just over 1Km.
Here is a sample of the images you can shoot from this location, I was using the D300 with a Nikon ED AF-S VR 70-200mm f/2.8 G fitted with a AF-1 Teleconverter TC-20E 2X giving an effective full frame zoom range of 210-600mm.
The aircraft range at this point is approx 1.16Km
The aircraft range at this point is approx 1.2Km
More images from the day
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