Taking photos at an Airshow

Alun

Hi guys,

any tips or tricks for taking photos at an airshow (OK, OK, it's the upcoming Bray airshow!)?

I've been scouring the net and some of the tips I've found are as follows :

1) For propellor driven aircraft and helicopters, try not to have the shutter speed too high. 'Frozen' propellors and rotors look silly. About 1/90 - 1/125 (assuming you can do that considering all other factors) is best apparently. For jets (are there any of these at the show?) it doesn't matter.

2) For blue skies (yeah right!), no exposure compensation. For cloudy, overcast skies, overexpose by 1 to 1.3 stops.

3) Try to avoid the obvious "full frame" shots. If they're using smoke trails try and get the shot to include them.

The thing I'm mainly worried about is focussing. I can set all kinds of dynamic, continuous focussing modes on my D70s, which work fine once I've "acquired" the subject, but just pointing the camera up at a featureless sky hoping to get the plane into one of the focussing zones is hoping a bit much. I'm tempted just to set it on infinity, keep the aperture as small as feasible and see what happens.

Any more ideas?

Merrion

There should be at least one jet...

I'd imagine a long lens would be useful as their going to be a few hundred feet away from you.

gs39t

The map on that website seems to show that this show is taking place along the coast - other than the parking i assume this is a free show then??

Might be a good event to test out my new Sigma 70-300mm

Sleipnir

Jeez they have a spitfire!

Alun

Merrion wrote:

There should be at least one jet...

They added that since I last looked!

Alun

gs39t wrote:

The map on that website seems to show that this show is taking place along the coast - other than the parking i assume this is a free show then??

Yes, it's free. I live in Bray, so I'm walking down to the seafront (assuming it isn't pissing it down with rain, that is). I'd recommend to anyone thinking of coming to take the Dart, parking is nigh on impossible down there even on a normal sunny weekend, so it will be dire on Sunday.

Might be a good event to test out my new Sigma 70-300mm

Hey, me too !!

gs39t

Alun wrote:

Hey, me too !!

I'm having trouble getting good still shots at 300mm at 1/90 of parked things, so for something flying i'm guessing 1/200 or there abouts. The auto focus will be fun to test on planes - ive only had this lens less than 24 hours now and still getting to grips with it

Gary

Merrion

If you have a long lens, why not go up the top of Bray Head - you should get good views plus if the plaves are flying low enough you could get shots from above them....