Lydd Airshow 09-09-2006 (lotsa pics)

[Skyraider3D]

Some nice visitors:




(whoever owns the Cessna... I love your plane!!! )

And what would we do without...

[Peter D Evans]

They are marvelous Ronnie, thanks for posting them!

BTW: are you available for camera lessons as the images I take are not a patch on these!!!!

cheers,

Peter D Evans
LEMB Administrator

[Skyraider3D]

Thanks Peter!

Camera lessons... not sure what to tell. Hmmm... let's see:

Equipment:
Any SLR will do, really, it's the lens that is important. 300mm is generally good for airshows. I use the Canon 100-400mm on an EOS 300D.
Shutterspeed:
As high as possible for jets, but for props no more than 1/400th of a second to keep the propeller "alive". I typically use 1/250th and for side-on take-off/landing shots go down to 1/30th-1/60th (not easy!). For slower planes I often use 1/100th to keep a sense of action. Helicopters look best at 1/200th or less. I use 1/125th. Anything higher and the rotor freezes. This makes helicopters pretty tricky to shoot now and then!
Exposure:
I usually frame a "generic scene" (ground, trees, sky) and take the lighting from that. A medium grey object (concrete or wall) works fine too.
ISO:
100 ISO whenever I can, as I hate grain
Panning:
Stand parallel to the flight line - do not face the plane, as you can't pan that way. Dry-practise your swing to make sure you are stable and don't hit your neighbours
Don't stop panning too soon. You might just miss a plane lighting its afterburner and pulling away hard trailing wingtip vortices etc etc...
Shooting:
Depending on the speed of the subject, I either pan and "machine-gun" away (multi-exposure) or take my time to frame the plane and shoot. Whatever technique I use, the success rate seems to be pretty constant. In general, take plenty of shots. Especially when using low shutterspeeds expect that perhaps only 1 in 5 is perfectly crisp. I shoot over 1000 images/show so that's no biggy. Plenty to choose from.
Composition:
Always remember you can crop an image, you can't make it bigger! Keep some spare space around your subject. Nothing is worse than a perfect picture with missing spinner tip!
Post editing:
Never be happy with the pic straight from the camera. Printers adjust the colours/brightness/contrast before printing your photos, and so can you with digital image. Photoshop (or similar) bitmap editing experience comes in handy there!
Also shoot RAW not JPG. RAW gives a greater range of colours to play with (12-bit compared to 8-bit for JPG) which can safe a slightly under or over exposed image. Also it doesn't suffer from JPG compression artefacts, which may be near-invisible on screen but are painfully obvious in print.
Experience:
Practise a lot... I am "rusty" every time at the start of the season and I've been attending airshows regularly since 1992. Nothing beats practise unfortunately!


PS. More here: http://skyraider3d.military-meshes.c...lydd060909.htm

[Peter D Evans]

...thanks for the detailed reply Ronnie! Some very interesting tips there, its a shame that the airshow season has more or less come to an end as there are several I would love to try...

I've just started using a Panasonic DMC-FZ7 and this is my first foray into digital photography having always used Canon EOS film cameras. The FZ7 has a lens "equivalent to 36mm to 432mm on a 35mm film camera". Taking static shots at max resolution in TIFF format is a breeze and the results are very good...

For me, the problem with taking flying shots is the shutter lag between images, even when in "machine-gun" mode. I appreciate that practice makes perfect and that the sooner I aquire a monopod to steady the camera/sweep, and perfect the art of taking panning pictures, the better my images should become... or perhaps I should save up the extra pennies for a dedicated 35mm digital with the option of adding lens etc (Nikon, Canon etc)...

Cheers,

Peter D Evans
LEMB Administrator

[Ruy Horta]

Thanks Ronnie, will certainly practice those tips!!