More Planes

digitalkiwi

There are pretty good if you want some practise get your self down to the Farnbrough Air Show in the summer, i went a couple of years ago took some 800 pics with the 20D started of a bit shakey but by the end a hardened anorak

Luckily these were taken towards the end of the day, and boy was it a hot day.

creators

Very much like the top shot Andy, nicely done.

hil26

See, told you I needed more practice, always fancied Farnborough, must try and get there soon.

Having siad that, I've never managed to get to the RAF Valley show, which is held at the place I took these shots.

Great pics, thanks for showing them

Venom

Yeh nice shots Andy, do you have any tips / do and don't for us?

Also what lens did you use?

Dave,
Think it looks like a bit of a waiting game (until plane is in right place for you).

Mike

digitalkiwi

Sorry its taken a while to answer this post have been a bit busy, anyways

here is the technical stuff equipment used was a Canon 20D with 75-300mm f5.4 Lens the good old cheap and nasty one.

the first image was 1/800 sec, f5.6 at ISO 100
second image was 1/640 sec, f5.6 at ISO 100

Day was a blistering hot cloudless day, all images were shot in Jpeg i didnt have my portable hard drive with me and didnt want to run out of memory cards as it was took some 800 shots, so as the light wasnt going to change much set the white balance to sunny, put in AV mode, and all AF points lit up. Oh and autofocus set to AI servo, the continuous mode, the shutter button set to continous. Exposure as always 2 thirds under and hey ready to go.

I have been to a few airshows but never Farnborough so wasnt really sure what to expect, anyways we stood right next to the runway and watched a few of the slower planes go past, because the planes were flying parallel with it as they are not allowed to fly over the crowds you can always get a side on shot like the second image i put up, so you get a feel for where the planes will fly, some do displays in front of you some just do fly pasts, i went through the programme with me friend who is a complete plane anorak and worked out what was going to do what, Red arrows will be all over the place, Harriers would hover and dont for get about the Apache doing a loop.

As for taking the pictures this is where the wildlife photography came in, you need to pan, stand with your hips sqaure to the direction you want to pan with you feet slightly apart then as the aircraft passes by move your shoulders from left to right or vice versa with the direction of the aircraft keeping the centre point of your viewfinder just in front of the aircraft this takes a bit of timing and just keep you finger on the shutter, for the shots where planes cross and do funky things they normally do it right in the centre of the runway watch the first one and you will see where abouts it is and they normally keep to the same spot so with those follow one plane panning and when you get close to them crossing push the shutter and get a couple of the crossing, by panning and following you are going to get at least one aircraft where as if you sit and wait on a spot you could just get the smoke trails. after a while you do get a feel for whats about to happen and there is so many displays from different aircraft on the day even if you miss a few you will get heaps of photos. Oh and by the end of the day i was knackered panning for long periods certainly does you in.

Dont forget what happens on the runway like the image below, here is the Tricolor display team (thinks thats not spelt properly) they like to start they display by dropping thier smoke on the start of the runway looks very

just wish i knew so could get closer. Hope that helps if not feel free to ask and if you want to see anymore images then i would be more than happy to share.

hil26

Will have to practice - that's a very good run through of what to expect and do

cheers

Oh, and that last shot- love it

Venom

Cheers Andy very nice right up. And as for seeing some more, well I for one would love to.

Cheers

Mike Very Happy

digitalkiwi

Some more of the photos can be seen at my online gallery by clicking on the link http://digitalkiwi.zenfolio.com/p665931181/

thanks for the kind words, just hope it helps.