Red bull Air race - Perth 2006

ok here are my shots from the air race
exif data should still be available for those of you who want to look at it
Camera was my 350d and my sigma 70-200 f2.8 with 2x teleconverter
all pilot names and aircraft types are from the local newspaper and may be wrong

Pre race entertainment - Caribou

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Nice shots Ben
The Caribou is excellent.
cheers J and J

Great Shots! Also like the Caribou shot!

Mike

Echo63 wrote in post #2284224
i ran into one potn member (the strap gave it away) but i cant rememer his username

*waves* That was me. Damn, the teleconverter did make a difference. Guess I'll have to get one for next year. Nice pics btw.

thanks for the comments.
the caribou flew very low and slow right past me as i was crossing the narrows to get to south perth.

i will put more photos up over the next few days, when i have time to go through them.

Riken - the teleconverter helps, but still isnt quite long enough, somewhere around a true 600mm lens on a crop body would be best. also, holding the lens steady enough at slow enough shutter speeds to get prop blur is a pain, out of the 400ish shots i took today, probably 250 of them are fuzzy from either movement or the camera misfocusing.
hope you got some good pics

I was standing next to a guy with a 400 f/2.8L, on the South Perth foreshore on Saturday. He was getting some awesome shots!On the 10D and with the 1.4x TCON it would work out to be 896mm f/4L!!!!

Mike

Yeah I was quite happy with the shots I got. I used Tv mode only (for the first time) and swapped from 250-320-400 to get a decent prop blur. Seemed to work out.

Autofocus problems were probably due to having the TC. Yet another reason why I wasn't sure about getting one. Also I'm pretty sure I'd never use it except for events like this, so I don't know if I'd want to get one.

Still, I got some good shots like this:

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Hey Echo63,

Not bad, not bad at all!! I really like ths shots with the buildings behind them. I have lots of them entering the box with the bridge in the background, but they are pretty boring from that angle. You did a good job with the prop blur, but I think you see what I mean with the TC. Oddly enuf they will be pretty sharp with the 1.4 on the 70/200 2.8 but the 2x really goes to the sh*ts. Perhaps you could pick up a 100-400 5.6 L next year if you really like shooting A/C. It is a pretty good lens and you still get to use zoom.

There is nothing more frustrating than making a large effort to go to airshows / races with the specific intentions of bringing home great images and have a 50% failure rate for what ever reason. I feel your pain. I will buy the 500 f4 L this coming year. Up till now I have been renting or borrowing from Canon.

Keep truckin you have some good images here,

Les Baldwin

I think the levelling tool would be worthwhile here.
Very distracting with Perth leaning over like that - I seem to check the lean on the buildings first , then check out the subject.

Choderboy, i see what you mean - i will fix it after work tonight (dont have time now)

Riken - nice shot - although maybe you could have shot a few to see if you could get the flag a bit straighter

L Baldwin - i was thinking about the 100-400 L but at the moment i really cant afford it. the 2x seemed to work ok but the AF was really slow, i think i missed a few shots because the AF was either looking at the wrong thing or just couldnt keep up.
for next year i will see if i can hire a longer lens, although it probably isnt worth it as i am not making any money from this at the moment.

L Baldwin - i was thinking about the 100-400 L but at the moment i really cant afford it. the 2x seemed to work ok but the AF was really slow, i think i missed a few shots because the AF was either looking at the wrong thing or just couldnt keep up.
for next year i will see if i can hire a longer lens, although it probably isnt worth it as i am not making any money from this at the moment.[/QUOTE]

Hey don't sell yourself short you can go into ungodly debt like JUST like the rest of us

I understand that you are shooting portraits at the moment. Great job and great basic training for the rest of your career. You will learn more about people and how the capture their images in just a few months than you ever could in some silly school. I did it and survived, DOH.

Just remember to put as much cash as you can in your glass not the bodies. The bodies will change but Canon stays pretty steady with it's glass.

Take care and enjoy the summer down there.

Les