Post by ronwarren on Nov 4, 2012 10:15:30 GMT -5
what I learned about photographing airshows
Here's what I would suggest when it comes to shooting those speedy beasts at the airshow. Lessons learned at the second of two airshows a week apart.
Find the sweet spot on the lenses you plan to use. I planned to use my longest lens, a fairly cheap Sigma 70-300mm without OS. Turns out it is sharpest around f11 and f13. Roger that!
Rather than the 1/1000 shutter speed suggested in my reading, 1/2000 or even 1/3200 is better (you will, unfortunately, be nearly freezing propellers, but everything else is better -- and it won't matter on jets)
With those settings, you're not getting a whole lot of light, so crank up the ol'. ISO. Probably beyond what you are comfortable with. On my Canon 40D I usually don't like to go higher that 400, maybe 640. But I went to 800 often and all is well. Higher ISO contributes to more noise, but more light lessens the effect and I was able to fix the rest with the noise reduction features in Lightroom 3.
If you have problems panning with the aircraft, I suggest looking for the slower parts of the performance such as when the plane hits the top of a loop-de-loop or intentionally stalls.
Leave the filters off your lens. The first show I used a polarizer and I think that it very subtly affected my autofocus accuracy (anybody ever have a similar experience?).
Other than that, get as close as you safely can, use your lens hood, shoot in manual and RAW, try your hand at manual focusing if your lenses hunts too much for that small object in the very big sky, and practice panning smoothly.
Thanks, R
Here's what I would suggest when it comes to shooting those speedy beasts at the airshow. Lessons learned at the second of two airshows a week apart.
Find the sweet spot on the lenses you plan to use. I planned to use my longest lens, a fairly cheap Sigma 70-300mm without OS. Turns out it is sharpest around f11 and f13. Roger that!
Rather than the 1/1000 shutter speed suggested in my reading, 1/2000 or even 1/3200 is better (you will, unfortunately, be nearly freezing propellers, but everything else is better -- and it won't matter on jets)
With those settings, you're not getting a whole lot of light, so crank up the ol'. ISO. Probably beyond what you are comfortable with. On my Canon 40D I usually don't like to go higher that 400, maybe 640. But I went to 800 often and all is well. Higher ISO contributes to more noise, but more light lessens the effect and I was able to fix the rest with the noise reduction features in Lightroom 3.
If you have problems panning with the aircraft, I suggest looking for the slower parts of the performance such as when the plane hits the top of a loop-de-loop or intentionally stalls.
Leave the filters off your lens. The first show I used a polarizer and I think that it very subtly affected my autofocus accuracy (anybody ever have a similar experience?).
Other than that, get as close as you safely can, use your lens hood, shoot in manual and RAW, try your hand at manual focusing if your lenses hunts too much for that small object in the very big sky, and practice panning smoothly.
Thanks, R
