Air Show AI Servo or One Stop AF

OK..this has been asked and answered before but i want to ask it because during the MCAS Miramar Air show i shot the other day...i used AI servo and i'm not sure that was the best option.

One other question...does anyone use Highlight Tone Priority? You can't go lower than ISO 200 and i think that may have contributed to some of the noise and grainess in some of my shots. I might be going to Nellis and want to see what others opinions are when shooting an airshow...btw i shot with the 5D MKII and the 100-400L and u can see the shots on my site if interested... Thanks!

AI Servo IF the AC is big enough in the viewfinder to be able to keep the focus point on it. Otherwise, I might use MF or 1-shot.

Good shots. I'd have used AI Servo for all of those, unless you cropped them a lot.

If I had it, I'd still stick with RAW & this:
Need an exposure crutch?

U know i usually do shoot everything in manual...except the WB anyway but i think during an airshow with planes flying across different light conditions on the sky its too much...do you also shoot airshows in manual exposure mode too? I have a hard enough time tracking the plane let alone having to look at the meter in the camera to verify i have the shot properly exposed.

One answer to that is in just under the image of the V-ball ref.

Yes. But look at "5. Sometimes the light is changing rapidly. What do you do then?" at the bottom of post #1 in that thread.

This is just wrong. The meter will show a different exposure in the same light depending on what color the subject is or how much sky is in the frame.
Post #47
So ignore it when you're shooting & concentrate on the aircraft.

chuckie365 wrote in post #8781276
OK..this has been asked and answered before but i want to ask it because during the MCAS Miramar Air show i shot the other day...i used AI servo and i'm not sure that was the best option.

One other question...does anyone use Highlight Tone Priority? You can't go lower than ISO 200 and i think that may have contributed to some of the noise and grainess in some of my shots. I might be going to Nellis and want to see what others opinions are when shooting an airshow...btw i shot with the 5D MKII and the 100-400L and u can see the shots on my site if interested... Thanks!

You have to be very good to be able to use One-Shot AF or manual focus on a moving aircraft. I find AI Servo works fine for me most of the time. Sometimes it misses focus, because I can't keep the focus point on the aircraft, but I shoot enough that there is usually one or two in a sequence that are focused properly. I used my BushHawk on Saturday and it helped a lot.

chuckie365 wrote in post #8782038
U know i usually do shoot everything in manual...except the WB anyway but i think during an airshow with planes flying across different light conditions on the sky its too much...do you also shoot airshows in manual exposure mode too? I have a hard enough time tracking the plane let alone having to look at the meter in the camera to verify i have the shot properly exposed.

I'll usually shoot an airshow in Av or Tv, depending on whether I'm shooting a prop plane or a jet. I Use Tv for the props because I can keep my shutter speed down in a range to get proper blur and I use Av for the jets to keep a smaller aperture for greater DOF to compensate for errors in AF when tracking a fast mover. This doesn't always work perfectly. I had problems with John Collver's shiny T-6. When he reached an angle where the sun was refelcting off the aircraft and directly back at me it fooled the camera's meter into underexposing the shot. I've had this happen with light glinting off canopies also.