I've been processing some images of an Extra EA 330SC, and it's been driving me nuts!!!! I finally realised why I was struggling to get photos what didn't seem to suffer from camera shake/missed panning. The 330SC has a 580 Cubic Inch flat six fule injected engine producing 320HP! Add to this that it can roll at a rate of 420 degrees/second, thats 70 rpm! The pilot, who has won the world aerobatic championships, flies it in anything other than straight lines during the display. When it is reasonably straight it's rolling. I usually shoot prop planes at 1/160 and in that time the plane rolls through 2º 37' 30". If it were to rotate around the long axis, and most of the time it seems it dosen't, it would mean that each wing tip would move through around 7"!
Even using a faster shutter speed, and the engine runs at 2700 rpm which is pretty fast for an aircraft engine/prop combination so I could go a little faster, my 50D's sync speed is 1/200. So even if I shot at 1/8000 the moving slit is going to see some significant movement between each wingtip, probably about a foot worths.
Still I did manage to get one stunner of an image, and I am glad that one of the labs I use has a 1/3rd off special on 30×20 Fuji Pearl (Metallic) prints until Friday, only £9.99!
A sustained knife edge, probably the only time in the whole show he had all the points of the aircraft moving in the same direction for any sustained length of time.
Climbing vertically, and with full starboard aileron rolling at something like 60 rpm. The axis of rotation is somewhere out about level with the end of the elevators, you can see just how much movement there is in this shot.
Alan