Australia Day airshow

Had an airshow over the city at around 2PM.. managed to get a few snaps

Nice shots, LS. Is the second one where they ran out of gas?

Cool shots - they were down here last night.

We have had parachutists this morning and we get an F-111 'dump and burn' tonight.

kiwi.....NICE! If you're shooting the dump and burn, how do you meter? Aperture priority and spot meter on the fire trail?

Click and hope, I guess - I haven't done one before - it is going to be about 9:10pm as the fireworks finish and I'll be still setup from the fireworks when he blasts through...

pop down to 24mm - focus on somewhere in the middle - f/8 to 11 - ISO around 200 - try and guess the shutterspeed and hope it doesn't get all blown out...

I guess I could spotmeter on the aircraft with -1 stop of EC and try for something - but I'll certainly be shooting RAW to try and have something recoverable.

I like your shots on the Roulettes - mine were too close - as they buzzed the city they were flying right over my house and I didn't really have time to run inside and swap the 100-400 for a smaller, faster lens.

kiwibloke wrote in post #2601658
Click and hope, I guess - I haven't done one before - it is going to be about 9:10pm as the fireworks finish and I'll be still setup from the fireworks when he blasts through...

pop down to 24mm - focus on somewhere in the middle - f/8 to 11 - ISO around 200 - try and guess the shutterspeed and hope it doesn't get all blown out...

I guess I could spotmeter on the aircraft with -1 stop of EC and try for something - but I'll certainly be shooting RAW to try and have something recoverable.

I like your shots on the Roulettes - mine were too close - as they buzzed the city they were flying right over my house and I didn't really have time to run inside and swap the 100-400 for a smaller, faster lens.

Thanks for the tip and compliment wow... they must have been close. I was using the 100-400 (roughly from 200-400mm) for all of these on a 1D classic with 1.3X crop factor. Not anywhere near enough megapixels though!

There are a lot of comments on the 1-4's push pull zoom, but DANG that zoom is fast when you need to change framing *NOW* to keep up with the planes!! Love the push pull

Are you going to be in Australia long? There is an airshow in a couple of weeks about 2/3 of the way between where you are now and where I am - a good chance to try that 100-400 out on some vintage aircraft.

Not too far from you is the Avalon airport and they have a huge international airshow in March...

All worth a look.

Yeah - the push-pull zoom is kinda snappy - although some call it the dust pump I really don't notice too much extra dust these days - there was a bit in the early days of owning it but very little now.

To some of the purists, your shutter speeds were a bit quick on the planes (frozen props) but that is the way I took them last night, too - at the top of the loop they were at around 4000' here - and I can't hold the 100-400 vertical at 1/125" long enough to pan and focus and click on a fast wee plane. By the time they got to tree height I couldn't be bothered adjusting, I just wanted the shot - lol - of a tail racing past the roof of my house...

In your shots, I suspect the number of megapixels isn't going to matter too much. You have a pretty good exposure. You have the shots - and the mental memories...

Long enough to be at Avalon, I'll definitely be going.. gonna give the 1-4 and a prospective 30D a real workout there. Good to hear the dust problem cleans up after a while, I had some issues in the beginning but I think they will die down after getting the mirror box throughly cleaned. I think the 1-4 is recirculating dust, rather than introducing new dust.

Good point about the prop. I was thinking about that but did not have the confidence to handhold such a heavy rig as low as 1/125 even with IS. The shots could be clearer when you pixel peep, they are not that sharp, but that could also be due to atmospherics - even on a clear day, tele's still have to shoot through a substantial amount of air, at least a couple of kft (diagonally, not just the plane's altitude).

Cool on Avalon - let's see if I can tempt you with this, too:

Temora Airshow

What do you think of the light down here? I find Australian light conditions remarkably different to other places - the contrasty blue in the skies is an example.

As for the handholding the 100-400 - no weight worries if the plane is on a horizontal level or just above, I find. I generally turn IS off, too, as the second or so it takes to get focal lock means the plane is about 30 feet past the focal point for me ...

My problem with planes is learning to pan - I am slowly getting better - but it is an art I haven't perfected at all - and we don't have a 'motorway' here for me to practice on speeding cars...

Love that second one Yoda.

kiwibloke wrote in post #2601842
Cool on Avalon - let's see if I can tempt you with this, too:

Temora Airshow

What do you think of the light down here? I find Australian light conditions remarkably different to other places - the contrasty blue in the skies is an example.

As for the handholding the 100-400 - no weight worries if the plane is on a horizontal level or just above, I find. I generally turn IS off, too, as the second or so it takes to get focal lock means the plane is about 30 feet past the focal point for me ...

My problem with planes is learning to pan - I am slowly getting better - but it is an art I haven't perfected at all - and we don't have a 'motorway' here for me to practice on speeding cars...

Very cool, thanks for letting me know.. it's quite a drive but they seem to have events all year round. I'll see whether I can spare a weekend for some of them.

The light is very different indeed, I've never seen skies so blue - well I have actually, but not for so many days a year. While I'm used to very hot weather (30+ degC.. I hail from Asia), the intensity of the sun comes as something new to me. I walked around for a couple of hours today and got sunburned. Wow. Even the hood on my 24-105 felt very hot. Now I know why they make them L's white

Athena wrote in post #2602475
Love that second one Yoda.

Thanks.. caught 'em as they were flipping over.