Night Air Show, part #2. Aircraft & Fireworks... lotsa' fun?

It was fun to be able to cover the event, but it was a real PITA to shoot! Mainly because of the small problem of seeing what was going on & manual focusing at the same time.

1. The light was really nice before the show. Vlado Lenoch's P-51D.

Very nice job.. despite the challenges of shooting in the dark..

Really nice, Photosguy. I really like the light on the Mustang.

They work for me & I don't think I could do as well even after a try or 2.

Thanks for the comments, guys. Looking back, I probably should have used ISO 3200, & this is one of the few times that I lusted for the higher ISOs of the newer cameras.

FWIW, I think your biggest problem was overexposure. It got you in two ways: 1) the fireworks are blown out and featureless, and 2) less exposure would have shortened your shutter speed and reduced motion blur.

I think you're doing everything pretty well. Lens wide-open, high ISO. I would guess that with some practice you will get some good shots.

Were you shooting bursts? That's a really key element to getting (a few) good shots under trying conditions.

The EXIF says you were shooting with an 85mm f/1.8 (?). Did you have to crop these shots a lot?

I have a really tough time shooting night shows (and fireworks). Metering is really tough. I've started experimenting with manual mode since the pyro/fireworks/lights are almost always pretty constant intensity.

Here's a photo I took at the Oshkosh (Airventure) night show this year:
http://moving-target-photos.com …ides/IMG_2078_s​creen.html
I don't have LR here to see the rest of the nearby shots, but I'm pretty sure it was one clear photo from many bursts I shot during the show.

GeoffSobering wrote in post #15098897
FWIW, I think your biggest problem was overexposure. It got you in two ways: 1) the fireworks are blown out and featureless, and 2) less exposure would have shortened your shutter speed and reduced motion blur.

Good point, but I've shot tons of fireworks & felt that the right exposure for them, about 5-stops darker, would be too far away from the best exposure for the aircraft which were my primary purpose for being there.
OTOH, I like your shot from Oshkosh, too. Maybe a little darker exposure will be something to try for next year to help with the lack of DOF problem.

One can only hope? ; )

No. I tried one, but felt it was too distracting while trying to frame & follow focus at the same time.

No, they were pretty close to me, & these are all full frame because I didn't want to blow the noise up more. Next year I may try using my 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor.

I'm glad that you didn't find shooting them easy! ; D

Thanks for the input, Goeff!

Forgot: There are a couple of other shots & some links in this thread: Night: The AeroShell Aerobatic Team's Gene McNeely in a AT-6 Texan.

PhotosGuy wrote in post #15099366
No. I tried one, but felt it was too distracting while trying to frame & follow focus at the same time.

I guess I really don't understand the urge to use manual focus. The fireworks should have been plenty bright for the AF sensors to pick up.

...and if it's one of those "shooting full manual is better than using the onboard computer to auto select user-elected settings" well, sorry can't help you. But that gimmic is only fantastic when you run to the internets to build street credit. in this case, shooting manual exposure is one thing; shooting sports in manual focus is something else

If you boil it down to the most critical case... You're relying on your camera to put food on your table, it would be foolish to make things unnecessarily complicated because that makes putting food on the table unnecessarily complicated

In my income-producing profession, Aerospace Engineering, I would never think for one second of doing something a more complicated way for the challenge, or to brag to friends or coworkers. Complication introduces opportunity for error, and hell, airplanes are frankly difficult enough as it is.

Don't use calculus when algebra will do. I'm going to use algebra and just wait for you to make a mistake or lose the job because it took 4x longer.

Here's my take. I only shoot aviation. Literally. Do. Not. Shoot. Anything. Else. I take 60-100k pictures a year for a handful of online and in-print publications as an amateur. Standing next to you that night, I would have had the camera in the bag - only unless I was specifically requested to get night shots - and the editor would have received significant push back from me on that task.

rammsteinmatt wrote in post #15106563
I guess I really don't understand the urge to use manual focus. The fireworks should have been plenty bright for the AF sensors to pick up.

The urge was that I was losing shots with AI Servo at the beginning. And while the fireworks might have been good to focus on, (1) I didn't think of switching back, (2) and if I had, I still might not have done it because I couldn't predict when they would dump enough to focus on & might have lost shots when it was a darker subject. Win some, lose some... ; )

Nope, I don't care about street cred. "Client cred" has always been the important factor.
And back when I started, through the lens metering & auto focus hadn't been invented yet, so using manual focus seemed a workable option. The biggest problem with that is that we had better viewfinders to focus with back then.

You have that right! ; D

The whole point of being there was to shoot a night show as I've never done that before. But I do have experience shooting other things in "available darkness":
Countdown - Three days to the Cruise
Dream Cruise Friday Evening

So the camera in the bag was not an option that I've ever considered because I'll always shoot, even if I have no market for the images. For me, shooting has been fun since the day I started, & "film" is even cheaper now. Pushing my personal limits is just part of the attraction.

But I appreciate the input, so thanks for the comments!