40D Does MBIF

Well, I finally got to take my 40D to its first airshow and after a preliminary glance through my pictures tonight I'm extremely pleased. The ability to turn off AF when AF is not possible is a fantastic option. My Bigma would always start searching as I tracked planes way up high but that didn't happen today. I've always had to rack the focus from close to infinity before but not today! The AF is fast and looks to be far more accurate than the 30D. The 6.5 fps got me shots I wouldn't have gotten before. I'm just thrilled.

Some shots, without final color correction (or indeed, not on a calibrated monitor, so who knows what these really look like.)

BTW, the airshow is the Miramar show and I'll be going back tomorrow. I'm in the Flight Deck Chalet so if you see a woman in a geeky photo vest and hat carrying a Bigma - that's me!

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One more.

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Yowsa Julie, great stuff!

Julie, I know nothing about aircraft. What's happening in the first picture? Looks fascinating!

-js

Sonic Boooooom

Wicked captures...

number six wrote in post #4114383
Julie, I know nothing about aircraft. What's happening in the first picture? Looks fascinating!

-js

It's water vapor condensing around the plane. It happens when a plane flies very close to the speed of sound (they are very careful to not break the sound barrier at airshows) in an area with a lot of water vapor in the air.

tiktaalik wrote in post #4114411
It's water vapor condensing around the plane. It happens when a plane flies very close to the speed of sound (they are very careful to not break the sound barrier at airshows) in an area with a lot of water vapor in the air.

W-O-W!!!!

I LOVE the first one.. that would definitely be frame-and-hang-on-the-wall grade. I thought it was actually breaking the sound barrier, but as you said, it wasn't. Looks like it is though. Very dramatic.

I haven't yet had an opportunity to try my 40D as it is not MBIF season around here. Thanks for confirming that the "Lens drive when AF impossible" CFn works great for stopping the hunting.

number six wrote in post #4114383
Julie, I know nothing about aircraft. What's happening in the first picture? Looks fascinating!

-js

I think the plane is breaking the sound barrier.
Very cool shot!

To be honest, I should probably mention the one thing I wasn't happy about today.

The 40D goes through memory cards like crazy. Those RAW files are huge!

OK, I gotta buy more memory before the Nellis show...


(BTW, if that first shot had been as the plane went through Mach 1 I would have broken car windows. As would everyone else parked on the base, as well as all the buildings on base and surrounding area. They don't break the sound barrier when flying this low.)

sRAW (no way in heck!)

I shoot LJPEG and sometimes I even drop down to Large Standard instead of Large Fine. There are a lot of fixups you can do in JPEG with a simple editor like Photoshop Elements (not even CS). Auto levels and saturation are just about all the controls I need. Lightroom works just fine with JPEG too.

With Large Standard, my 40D has a 99+ shot buffer, possibly infinite. I used this (actually Medium Fine) to get an infinite buffer on my 350D. Large Std is better because you can still crop and there is minimal to no difference in quality compared to Large Fine.

AMAZING!
So cool!!!

I'm just too stuck on RAW I'm afraid! I don't think I know how to edit a JPG

Another thing. I haven't completely gone through each shot in detail (it's getting late and I need to get to sleep for tomorrow) but it looks like I got a lot better shots of the F117 than I usually get. I think the 10D and 30D had trouble focusing on the black surface but it looks like the 40D did a lot better.

tiktaalik wrote in post #4114457
I'm just too stuck on RAW I'm afraid! I don't think I know how to edit a JPG

Aww come on Which image editor/RAW tool are you using?

Lightstream wrote in post #4114465
Aww come on Which image editor/RAW tool are you using?

CS3. It's got a weird bug though and I just can't seem to open JPGs in it

tiktaalik wrote in post #4114476
CS3. It's got a weird bug though and I just can't seem to open JPGs in it

:p

Oh well, looks like you'll be needing a few more 16GB cards