Advice on shooting an Airshow

I am going to RAF Waddington Airshow in July and I am thinking of renting a lens to use while I am there.
I have a Canon 1d MkIIn.

I have looked at one of the big Sigma lenses, and also at the 100-400mm Canon L.

What I would like is twofold:

1. What lens would I be best getting? For the planes in the sky we will be sat in an enclosure alongside the runway, so the lens won't be carries on the camera very much. On the second day we will be doing the ground displays, so may use a different lens for that anyway (I have a 28-80 Tamron, and a 50mm f1.8).

2. What settings might I use for shots of planes in flight? I know there are several settings for the use of various focus points, auto-expansion of the focus points used etc. Shoot AV, TV Manual? And then also compensation on or off? Any advice specific to the 1dMKIIn or indeed, general advice, would be appreciated.

Bend The Light wrote in post #15617653
I am going to RAF Waddington Airshow in July and I am thinking of renting a lens to use while I am there.
I have a Canon 1d MkIIn.

I have looked at one of the big Sigma lenses, and also at the 100-400mm Canon L.

What I would like is twofold:

1. What lens would I be best getting? For the planes in the sky we will be sat in an enclosure alongside the runway, so the lens won't be carries on the camera very much. On the second day we will be doing the ground displays, so may use a different lens for that anyway (I have a 28-80 Tamron, and a 50mm f1.8).

2. What settings might I use for shots of planes in flight? I know there are several settings for the use of various focus points, auto-expansion of the focus points used etc. Shoot AV, TV Manual? And then also compensation on or off? Any advice specific to the 1dMKIIn or indeed, general advice, would be appreciated.

Short lens for planes on the ramps.

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See the "Airshow guys - prop freeze?" & other links in post #2 of: Shooting airshows in Manual, and good luck!

Thanks guys. The runway runs SW roughly, so I would be shooting to the SE, roughly.

Thanks for the info.

One thing to consider is using an ND filter with prop aircraft in bright sun. It allows the aperture to be much more open in TV mode. Without the nd, the aperture can creep up to f16-f22 which on a nice blue sky can is great at showing all the dust spots on your sensor!

1/100 f6.3 iso100 .6 ND filter

IMAGE LINK: http://yipdog.smugmug.​com …019415&k=p4h5j6​P&lb=1&s=A

IMAGE LINK: http://yipdog.smugmug.​com …607492&k=h4WCTR​w&lb=1&s=A

yipDog Studios wrote in post #15618720
One thing to consider is using an ND filter with prop aircraft in bright sun. It allows the aperture to be much more open in TV mode. Without the nd, the aperture can creep up to f16-f22 which on a nice blue sky can is great at showing all the dust spots on your sensor!

1/100 f6.3 iso100 .6 ND filter

IMAGE LINK: http://yipdog.smugmug.​com …019415&k=p4h5j6​P&lb=1&s=A

versus

1/100 f20 iso100 no ND and a lot of spot removal..

IMAGE LINK: http://yipdog.smugmug.​com …607492&k=h4WCTR​w&lb=1&s=A

Thanks.

yipDog Studios wrote in post #15618720
One thing to consider is using an ND filter with prop aircraft in bright sun. It allows the aperture to be much more open in TV mode. Without the nd, the aperture can creep up to f16-f22 which on a nice blue sky can is great at showing all the dust spots on your sensor!

That's something I never considered before. Thanks for sharing.

Which ever of the long lenses you get make sure it has IS/OS. I can personally recommend Lenses for Hire for rentals in the UK. I did look at the another company that specialises in Sigma, but they needed scans of both a UK Driving Licence AND a Passport. Not having the passport made that a non starter. Lenses for Hire don't have the Sigma OS lenses so I went with the 100-400 L IS.

As for settings, actually as the aircraft are pretty predictable for the AF, even the very small highly manoeuvrable aerobatic aircraft are relatively easy for the AF system to track. Centre point and AI Servo will be fine, although I prefer Back Button Focus (BBF). I will always shoot manual, and using an incident lightmeter will give the best results. Failing that using a grey card to get an exposure from is the next best alternative, making sure that the card is in the same light. Mostly British grass is geen enough that it is also pretty close to a mid tone, so you can also usually get a good meter reading from that. I always shoot ETTR and in RAW, I find effectively exposing for the underside of the aeroplane gives the best results in post. This is when the latest Adobe RAW processing engine comes into it's own, the new highlight and shadow recovery tools are perfect for this sort of work.

For anything with a propeller then your MAXIMUM shutter speed will want to be 1/160s for helicopters it is even worse, to get a really good disk from a largish helicopter needs 1/60s. Jets are easy just go as fast as you can, but ideally you want over 1/1000. I would keep the IS on and in Mode 2 all of the time, it not only helps keep the image sharp but also helps with framing, as you can of course see the result in the viewfinder. I have seen camera shake in shots taken at 300mm at 1/2000s so there is not really any speed that is to fast to really need the IS. Using an ND may be fine to reduce the shutter speed, but remember that those big lenses use some very large front elements, so you will either need to hire those too or use one of the really large sized filter systems.

These couple of shots of a Sea King at the Lowestoft Sea Front Air Festival show what I mean about the shutter speed necessary needed to get any decent amount of main rotor blur in a large hovering helicopter, both shot at 1/60s with a rented 100-400 L.

Alan

BigAl007 wrote in post #15631457
For anything with a propeller then your MAXIMUM shutter speed will want to be 1/160s for helicopters it is even worse, to get a really good disk from a largish helicopter needs 1/60s. Jets are easy just go as fast as you can, but ideally you want over 1/1000. I would keep the IS on and in Mode 2 all of the time, it not only helps keep the image sharp but also helps with framing, as you can of course see the result in the viewfinder. I have seen camera shake in shots taken at 300mm at 1/2000s so there is not really any speed that is to fast to really need the IS. Using an ND may be fine to reduce the shutter speed, but remember that those big lenses use some very large front elements, so you will either need to hire those too or use one of the really large sized filter systems.

Alan

Couple of incorrect statements here...

The ND's are used to limit aperture since the shutter is fixed at your desired prop blur setting. This is in shutter priority mode which greatly simplifies exposure. All I ever adjust is shutter for blur and the EC for cloudy vs sunny. I alway try to shoot at ISO100 unless it's late in the day getting dark or it's super cloudy dark. Even then I won't go above ISO400.

The big lenses use drop in filters in the rear of the lens. You can get a version that takes any 58mm filter which keeps it very inexpensive. There are no threads on the front of the big lenses like the 300, 400, 500 and up.

The version 2 of all the big lenses has a mode 3 IS which is fantastic. So when renting look for those.

So, I have a large Sigma on order for this (best sort my monopod, eh?). But I have also been advised to get a WA for the static displays as getting shots from further way will be tough, I'll need to go close and wider.
Any advice on a decent WA (zoom?) to go with the 1DIIn (1.3x crop)?

Thanks

For a wide angle I would recommend the sigma 10-20 as waddo let's you pretty close to the aircraft, I went to Waddington in 2011 and found that my 100-400 is more than enough.

One thing to think about is a hat, bug spray (when I went it was a nightmare for midges) and some sunscreen

http://widowmaker.is-a-geek.com/?portfolio=wa​ddington-2011

UK_Tomcat_Fan wrote in post #15738405
For a wide angle I would recommend the sigma 10-20 as waddo let's you pretty close to the aircraft, I went to Waddington in 2011 and found that my 100-400 is more than enough.

One thing to think about is a hat, bug spray (when I went it was a nightmare for midges) and some sunscreen

http://widowmaker.is-a-geek.com/?portfolio=wa​ddington-2011

Thanks. A superb set you have there. Really looking forward to it. Especially like the Vulcan. Beautiful plane!

I'll look up that 10-20 too. Looked at the canon one but it's ef-s, so not for the 1d.

Cheers