Air show suggestions

[Canonshooter]

Hi all. I am pretty new to the group, and this is my first time posting. I have a Canon Eos 10d, a tamron 28-300-f3.5-6.3 lens, and a sigma 50-500 f4-6.3 lens. I am going to an airshow tomorrow here in florida. Does anyone have any suggestions or tips for taking good shots of the airshow? Many thanks in advance, and I apologize for such a long winded question.

[dn7elson]

For the aerial shots, since the aircraft will likely be coming from all directions and quickly :) I generally setup the distance on the zoom in advance and follow my ears to catch the aircraft. At 400 MPH and up across the tarmack, you don't have time to find, focus and zoom. I just listen, point and pan. Unless there is background other than sky (e.g., low flying plane in the distance) shutter speed and DOF are not much of an issue.

The flying aircraft will all be beyond a 30' distance so you might even want to go with a manual focus depending upon the amount of zoom to take the autofocus lag out of play.

The ones sitting on the ground in front of you are much easier to spend time with and take a variety of shots.

[Canuck]

Hi, I have been planespotting here in the UK, at Heathrow several times and shot several airshows. I track them from a ways out and take the pic as I feel it is the right time, adjusting focus as needed. The Sigma 120-300 F2.8 EX is a real beast of a lens but it works real well in planespotting, except when the plane passes overhead and it is too close to get the whole plane in due to the 1.6 crop factor which sucks. The flip side is that it allows you the reach of a 480mm equivilent lens and still have the F2.8 to boot. I'll probably build a website in the next few weeks and post some pics and refer you there. I have had semi-success in the 35mm (gasps!) arena till I went digital and got some quality lenses (also have a Canon 16-35mm F2.8 L lens) in my bag. I had some reasonable success shooting pics of the US Air Force Demo team, the Thunderchickens (Thunderbirds) in Nov, 2000. The weather was horrible and rained a lot. I found a place to take pics from under the wing of an aircraft. The contrast was lacking severely! There are a few good ones though which may have been flukes? I must have taken 200+ pics that weekend. I can't wait to have a go in digital. I will be shooting RAW only. That's another bit I reccommend as you get it all! See other posts on this forum why!

Another point, make sure your shutter speed is faster than the aircraft are moving so you freeze the plane wherever it is at that time. Try around 1/500th second to start. It may require 1/750th, or 1/1000th sec. It is hard to tell. If I recall correctly I was successfully shooting Concorde landing 24 Oct 03 at 1/500th sec and the Thunderchickens at 1/500th to 1/1000 sec. Although, I shot Concorde completely manual and it was spot-on!

BTW, I have had my 10D since end Apr, 03 and have cracked 1700 pics a couple of day ago.

Cheers from England,
Canuck

[codeglue]

I was in the same position a while back. The 10D will do a great job for you. I know this is heresy, but I set the thing to sports mode and fired away. Awesome results.

Main things to remember

1. Plan ahead with your compact flash capacity. Really sucks running out of room before the main attraction

2. Keep the shutter speed higher than the focal length

3. BUT if you are shooting prop aircraft, try and slow down the shutter as much as you dare to allow some "motion" blur of props or rotors.

4. Sharpness will be enhanced by stoppping down aperture as much as you can

5. Amazing things can be done with photoshop to recover the shadows. Much less can be done to recover blown highlights.

6. #5 is really enhanced if you shoot RAW. See #1 though.

7. Choose your position well. Much of the activity will be low on the flightline, airshow center, it sucks to have obstructions or to be off to airshow left or right.

8. Remember to put the camera down and enjoy some of the show. My pictures indicate that I saw a great show, though I don't really remember it. :)

9. If the main act is US Navy or Air Force, at some point they will do a high speed pass from the rear and scare the hell outta everybody. Much more fun to turn and watch the crowd as this is happening, the announcer will say something silly like watch solo 2 as he goes off into the distance, don't, turn to the crowd....

Have fun,

Airshow season is dead around here for a while

Lee
Overland Park, KS

[RbnDave]

Use your AI servo auto focus mode. This mode predicts where the subject will be when you press the shutter button. It's great for subjects that are moving towards you or away from you at a constant speed. The airplane may look slightly out of focus through the view finder in AI servo mode, but the photo will come out in sharp focus because the lens is actually planning and focusing for the lag when you press the shutter button.

[xuxu1]

Using fast shutter speed for jets is absolutly OK.

However very often you also have "prop" aircraft like classic airliners and old warplanes. Be sure to use a slow shutter speed (1/125 or even slower depending on conditions) when taking pics of them in flight or taxiing. Otherwise you would have a "standing" prop. :)

Looks weird seeing a prop plane in the air with standing prop. :D

Regards
Ed

[mjordan]

I've taken pictures at a number of airshows with my D30 but haven't had a chance with my 10D yet. The D30 did a very good job with a 70-200 4.0L lens. I can't wait to go to the next airshow with the 10D and my 70-200 2.8L IS lens and 24-70 2.8L lens.

I found that AI focus is not that great with the D30 and not much better with the 10D. I do a lot of action shooting and have found that One Shot using just the center focus point is the best for fast focusing. With my EOS 3, AI works a lot better and I hear that with the 1D and 1Ds it also works a lot better. But that's why you pay the big bucks for those cameras.

You want to be as close to the flight line and as near the middle as you can be. That is where they are going to be keying their flights on. And you want the sun behind you if you can be on that side of the area they are performing.

As others said, shoot fast shutter speeds. Depth of field shouldn't be an issue since you will be shooting at about infinity most of the time anyway, but you might want to consider where the sweat spot of your lens is and shoot about f8 if you can still get a fast shutter speed.

Here is one of the pictures I took at the last airshow:

http://www.sitnprettyphoto.com/airshow/f18_0883.jpg

and one of the Thunderbirds:
http://www.sitnprettyphoto.com/display/tb0191fa.jpg

If you do get down close to where their low level runs our, you might want to take ear plugs with you. And though the sun will probably be down in the south, unless you are already well tanned, you will want to consider how standing in the sun all day will be on your skin. A hat and sunglasses are always good ideas.

And go early to get a good parking spot and viewing spot.

Mike

[Canonshooter]

Thanks everyone for the helpful tips. I can't wait for the airshow. I have always loved airshows, but have only recently started trying to take a few pictures of them. One thing I had not thought of was the slower shutter speed for prop planes. I have taken some shots of prop planes in the air, and the shutter speed was too fast. And it just froze the prop. And you all are correct, it is weird looking to see that on a plane in flight. Wow! Those are some truly beautiful shots Mike. Were those taken with the 70-200 2.8L IS lens? I hope my shots come out as nice. Many thanks again everyone

[mjordan]

canonshooter wrote:
Wow! Those are some truly beautiful shots Mike. Were those taken with the 70-200 2.8L IS lens? I hope my shots come out as nice. Many thanks again everyone

Thanks. No, all the pictures I took at that airshow were with the D30 and 70-200 4.0L lens. The main limitation I had with the D30 was I could only shoot 3 shots per sequence (I shoot raw) before it had to dump the buffer. So I did have to plan my shots sometimes and not start shooting while the jets were still a ways out. There were a number of times I did and it was the 4th or 5th shot (had I been able to take them) where the plane was at the best spot. With the 10D, even in raw I can get 8 or 9 shots and then as soon as it has dumped enough out of the buffer to make room I can shoot again. Being able to take a long sequence of shots is one reason I wanted the 1D so much. It does 18 shots in a sequence.

Mike

[k4gps]

canonshooter wrote:
I am going to an airshow tomorrow here in florida. Does anyone have any suggestions or tips for taking good shots of the airshow?
Was that the Stuart or Daytona show ? I was in Stuart with a 10D that was less than 24hrs old! The show was great but not as good as last year. The photos were much better than what I was doing with a ElanII.
My number one problem with Air Shows is properly exposing the subject against the usually bright skies. If I expose for the subject the background is washed out or comes out grey, if I meter on the sky then the subject is underexposed or details are lost.
This show was different than others due to a emergency with one of the jets that flew. Due to a lost landing gear door he had to fly to Pratt Whitney for a emergency landing but Pratt is where the military jets were based out of. This held up the show since they would not fly out with a emergency strip that could be shut down due to a crash. He landed with no trouble and the F16 finally took off. The good part was that the sun was setting and many of those shots came out wonderful with the orange sky.
Rich

[sjprg]

Here is a PS plugin to help fix motion blur. not perfect but is does help.

http://www.fixerlabs.com/

Paul

[geoff@rio]

I've not had the chance to use the facility at an airshow yet but I can see that autobracketing with a big capacity cf card could be a very useful feature as is AI focus prediction. Thats if you have the 10D!

[k4gps]

Yes.. I think the WB bracket would be good in addition to the AEB. I do have the D10 but did not want to fool with that during a air show and using a 512 MB CF since it was my first time using it.

Rich

[mjordan]

AI focusing, even on the 10D is not up to snuff. It's better than on the D30, but I found I still lost a lot of shots on high speed subjects. I've tried it on wind surfers and kite boarders, both coming towards me and going across me and I still didn't had a number of out of focus shots. It's like it can't quit keep up. My EOS 3 did a better job. I've also tried it on dog agility and it was even worse with close fast moving dogs (and those puppies can move).

So I rarely even attemp to use AI anymore. Every once in awhile I try it just to see if it's gotten better over time, but I always switch back to one shot. With that I just have to remember to take my finger off the shutter button to let it re-focus.

Mike

[Andy_T]

Hi all,

anybody who could give a first experience on how the AI Focus of the Digital Rebel performs under such extreme circumstances?

Regards,
Andy

[DamienB]

mjordan wrote:
AI focusing, even on the 10D is not up to snuff. It's better than on the D30, but I found I still lost a lot of shots on high speed subjects

I have found it to be excellent with one proviso - the 10D seems to have a bug that throws the focus off dramatically at random during a sequence of shots - my feeling is that the focusing is not being turned off for the correct amount of time when the shutter is open, so it tries to focus on an entirely black scene, hunts, shutter closes - out of focus for the next shot. It will recover within 2/3 shots but this is pretty annoying when it happens. 3 different 10ds have exhibited this behaviour, and you can demonstrate it easily by putting it on AI servo, aiming at a nearby tree and just holding the button down. Sooner or later you'll find it stumbling.

I have found one shot mode can sometimes get focus entirely wrong on fast moving subjects, so your one chance is lost. At least with AI you have a good chance of the majority of shots in a sequence being okay.

[slin100]

mjordan wrote: AI focusing, even on the 10D is not up to snuff.
You should look at this article (http://photonotes.org/other/ai-servo.html). In particular, note that the first shot taken using AI Servo is not guaranteed to be in focus. The first shot is handled with "release priority", meaning that the camera will take the shot when the shutter button is pressed, whether the subject is in focus or not. If the shutter button continues to be depressed, then subsequent shots are handled with "focus priority": the camera's AF system will control the actual shutter release. Of course, you must be in continuous drive mode to take multiple shots with the shutter button depressed.

[mjordan]

I do shoot in continuous drive mode.

That's interesting information, Damien and Steven. I've not really analysised the out of focus pictures in a sequence, I just know there are out of focus pictures. And you are right, I do get out of focus on one shot when I take 2 or 3 quick pictures and haven't taken my finger off the button to let it re-aquire focus on subjects moving closer or further away.

I was looking at Jim's boat race pictures and saw that he shoots in AI and I didn't see any out of focus pictures at screen size... but then he could have gotten rid of those few pictures.

Ok, you have convinced me to try AI again the next time I have plenty of light and I'm shooting action sequences. I'll pay attention to which are out of focus, the first one or those within the sequence itself. But then if it's the first one and then within the sequence the 10D trips and focuses on the back of the shutter and it takes 2 pictures to recover and I usually shoot 4 or 5 pictures in a sequence, I've lost 2/3rds of my sequence. hmmm, how come I never had this problem with my manual focus RB67 when I used it to shoot jets and sports? LOL!

Mike

[Andy_T]

slin100 wrote:
In particular, note that the first shot taken using AI Servo is not guaranteed to be in focus. The first shot is handled with "release priority", meaning that the camera will take the shot when the shutter button is pressed, whether the subject is in focus or not. If the shutter button continues to be depressed, then subsequent shots are handled with "focus priority": the camera's AF system will control the actual shutter release. Of course, you must be in continuous drive mode to take multiple shots with the shutter button depressed.


That leads to the consclusion that it's not really a good thing to use the AI focus in single shot mode :)

Does anybody know whether this also holds true for the 300D? Under these circumstances, this camera's habit of deciding on its own whether to use AI or single shot servo now looks like a *real* limitation :(

Regards,
Andy