Little Gransden

Hazza

Hazza

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Name
Harry
Edit My Images
Yes
Star of the show for me was Rob Davies in Marinell, closely followed by Mark Jefferies.

IMG_1503 by Harry Measures, on Flickr

Little Gransden Airshow 2014 by Harry Measures, on Flickr

Little Gransden Airshow 2014 by Harry Measures, on Flickr

Little Gransden Airshow 2014 by Harry Measures, on Flickr

Little Gransden Airshow 2014 by Harry Measures, on Flickr

Little Gransden Airshow 2014 by Harry Measures, on Flickr

Little Gransden Airshow 2014 by Harry Measures, on Flickr

Little Gransden Airshow 2014 by Harry Measures, on Flickr

I'll post some more up in a bit :)

Harry.
 
Thanks Bernie. TBH I found yesterday an uphill struggle, mainly due to the 'star' items not making use of the dog leg bend and a massive bit of the flying programme appearing to be filler... Oh well.

Here's the remainder of the 'decent' shots:

Little Gransden Airshow 2014 by Harry Measures, on Flickr

Little Gransden Airshow 2014 by Harry Measures, on Flickr

Little Gransden Airshow 2014 by Harry Measures, on Flickr

Little Gransden Airshow 2014 by Harry Measures, on Flickr

Little Gransden Airshow 2014 by Harry Measures, on Flickr

Little Gransden Airshow 2014 by Harry Measures, on Flickr
 
Some lovely shots. Highlight for me (aside from Lancs & Vulcan) was Marks display - stunning. The girl in the pitts was very good too. Shame the Lancs couldn't have used the dog leg and give us some nice topside shots
 
cambsno said:
Some lovely shots. Highlight for me (aside from Lancs & Vulcan) was Marks display - stunning. The girl in the pitts was very good too. Shame the Lancs couldn't have used the dog leg and give us some nice topside shots
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It's just mind bending isn't it, Mark's display. Same can't be said for the Spitfire which I found rather disappointing.

Paul Holtom said:
Yup agree that the section of the show I watched from outside was very average, Sywell was in my opinion much better. You have done well with these given the lighting was very poor for most of the time.
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Yes, I thought that too yesterday night despite the high winds and cancellations!

Harry.
 
Without wishing to hijack this thread,
I think the last time I photographed an airshow was in the days of manual focus film cameras, and this was the first time I've attempted it with an autofocus camera.
These days I'm more into landscape and architecture, so it was a bit of a change from my normal subject material.
I must say, due to inexperience and the wrong camera settings, my results were pretty poor, and it's a revelation seeing what is possible from Harry's photos.
Very few of my shots are acceptably sharp, and I'm hoping for some advice.
I was reading in another thread about the desirability of using a lowish shutter speed to maintain prop blur, so I used 1/250th which worked on most of my shots.
My biggest problem was with Servo focus, and I think it's because I was using centre point with AI Servo, but if the centre point left the subject the focus was hunting and throwing the subject out.
I used a Canon 70D with EF100-400 mm lens for these.
These are a couple of my best examples, but I think they should be sharper, all at 1/250th sec and around F20.

View attachment 19282

View attachment 19283

I think my reactions are pretty decent though, even if they are not sharp:
View attachment 19284
Any advice and recommendations please?
 
The 100-400 isn't known for being very sharp at the 400 end, so that's maybe one explanation. Also there's some very poor copies of it around. If you get a good one, its fine, if not......
There's also the issue of camera shake, the effect of wind and sometimes the camera just not wanting to know.
You should be OK with the centre autofocus point, I have used that for years without an issue, although never with a 70D.
I'd say practice and see how you get on with more experience.
Hazza is good at this, and also has the advantage of using something that makes the Hubble Telescope feel inadequate, while that's not the be all and end all, it does help get his breathtakingly good images.
As an after thought, isn't there something I recall from the dim and distant past about a point where if you stop down you get far less sharp photos? F20 and 250th seems like a combination where you'd have to use a high ISO. If so leave it at 100, and you'll probably be around the F8/F11 mark, and that might improve matters.
 
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I was mainly at 100 ISO on Sunday, typically at 1/250 and anything between f8 and f13 depending on light
 
Bernie174 said:
The 100-400 isn't known for being very sharp at the 400 end, so that's maybe one explanation. Also there's some very poor copies of it around. If you get a good one, its fine, if not......
There's also the issue of camera shake, the effect of wind and sometimes the camera just not wanting to know.
You should be OK with the centre autofocus point, I have used that for years without an issue, although never with a 70D.
I'd say practice and see how you get on with more experience.
Hazza is good at this, and also has the advantage of using something that makes the Hubble Telescope feel inadequate, while that's not the be all and end all, it does help get his breathtakingly good images.
As an after thought, isn't there something I recall from the dim and distant past about a point where if you stop down you get far less sharp photos? F20 and 250th seems like a combination where you'd have to use a high ISO. If so leave it at 100, and you'll probably be around the F8/F11 mark, and that might improve matters.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that.
I wasn't aware of any deficiencies in the Canon 100-400 and I thought it was pretty highly regarded for wildlife.
I was using 200 ISO and the Lancaster shots were at f18.
As I said, I mostly take subjects that don't move, but here is one from the only time I've taken BIF with the 100-400 at 400mm, but with my old EOS 30D camera.
This is the sort of sharpness I think is acceptable, although it was at 1/1000 sec at f11 (this is the full frame - not cropped).
View attachment 19357

I'm thinking I may be suffering camera shake by using 1/250th, but for prop blur it's the right way to go, and I don't normally suffer from shake, although I would also normally use a higher shutter speed.
I was also not sure of which IS mode I should have been using on the 100-400.
I'm thinking I may go to Duxford and have another go at getting some better results, nothing like a bit of practice.
Maybe I might revert to 1/1000 sec and accept I'm going to get frozen props if I can get the rest sharp (can always add some blur in PP!).

At least I've got the chance of another attempt if I go to Duxford, or even one of the other shows.

The other thing I noticed is that Hazza's first shot is almost identical to one of mine.

View attachment 19358
How close is that for coincidence?
The pilot is even looking in the same direction.
 
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Brian, without looking 100% it look like the first image has suffered from a mis focus rather than camera shake. The second image is more acceptable (and the light glinting is nice), 3rd image just looks soft, probable camera shake.

Personally I gave up with centre point focus and just use all focus points. Generally works rather well as it stops the focus hunting if you misjudge speed etc and loose the A/C out of the centre. Looking at your photo of the vulture I think we can rule out the lens being a bad copy. A lot of aviation (esp panning) comes down to technique, and that requires a lot of practice. I shoot something in the air most weekends at Duxford and a lot of mine still get thrown away due to camera shake.

Jets are a bit easier to shoot as you can just set it in Av and as long as you get a shutter speed over 1/800 all you've got to do is get the focus right!

RE IS I generally use mode 2 but can be a hinderance if it's gusty.
 
Hi Hazza,
Thank you for the response, exactly the sort of critique and advice I'm looking for, and I respect your obvious expertise on this subject.
The Hurricane is definitely OOF, rather than camera shake, and I had the focus point apparently solidly locked on the aircraft all the time it approached (in Servo AF).
This was one of a sequence and was the best shot in terms of sharpness. If it had been camera shake I would have expected at least one of the 8 or 9 shots in the sequence to have been sharp.
The twin Pitts is one of the sharpest of all the shots I took that afternoon and I'm reasonably happy with it. Obviously I didn't see the sun flare at the moment it was taken, but I think it looks pretty cool.
I didn't expect the two Pitts crossing to be particularly sharp at 1/250th, but I was pleased with my reactions to be able to get both in the same frame, let alone crossing like that. I was obviously tracking the one flying right to left, which is why it's the sharper of the two. I recall taking similar shots of the Red Arrows crossing like that years ago with film, and always had the problem that the one you are following is going to be sharper than the one crossing, which is effectively going at twice the speed you are panning at.

I bought the 70D specially for action shots (my regular "landscape" camera is a 6D) and this was the first time I've tried it for action.
Part of the trouble was that the printed manual doesn't cover setting all the different focus modes (it's in the full manual on the CD) and I was fumbling to try and enable the multiple zone focus mode, so I claim incompetence on my part in that respect.
While I was walking round the classic cars in the morning, I took a quick grab shot of the "Marinell" Mustang when he was landing (with a different lens) and at f8 - 1/2500th sec you can literally count the rivet heads, although obviously the prop is frozen.

With the lens IS setting, again I didn't have the manual and I wasn't sure which setting to use on the 100-400 lens.
I seemed to recall that mode 2 was for panning shots, and I just checked the lens and it was set to mode 2.

With the benefit of hindsight I think I'm going to Duxford since I want to see the Lancasters again, so I'll see if I can do better next time.

Thanks again for the advice.
 
I have a 70D and I am still getting used to the focusing on it. I will see how i get on this Saturday at Shoreham, although I don't have a 100-400mm L. I agree with Harry that it is mostly down to technique and practise. The more air shows I go to the better I get, don't give up the hit rate for this type of photography will always be low due the the nature of the subject matter. Not much wrong with the picture of the Pitts.
 
Hazza said:
Yes, mode 2 is panning.

Best of luck at Duxford. You'd probably be best stood on the bank past the land warfare centre.

Harry.
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Thanks for that Harry. I'll do my best to get there.
hamster100 said:
I have a 70D and I am still getting used to the focusing on it. I will see how i get on this Saturday at Shoreham, although I don't have a 100-400mm L. I agree with Harry that it is mostly down to technique and practise. The more air shows I go to the better I get, don't give up the hit rate for this type of photography will always be low due the the nature of the subject matter. Not much wrong with the picture of the Pitts.
Click to expand...
I used to go to air shows quite a bit when my kids were younger but Little Gransden was my first in quite a few years.
Funny thing was, I bought the 100-400 lens specially for a visit to the Hawk Conservancy, where I took the Vulture shot.
I'd never taken BIF before and I was quite prepared to throw out 90% of my efforts.
To my great surprise I achieved about 50% hit rate using my old 30D.
I got the 70D a few weeks ago and I'd only tried using it on my regular landscape and architecture shots.
After my success at the bird sanctuary I was anticipating similar results at the air show, so I'm naturally disappointed at the poor results.
I must say I think birds are more difficult to photograph than aircraft.
They might fly more slowly (although not always) but they are a lot smaller and their flightpath is a lot less predictable than a plane.
I'm hoping that some of my poor results are due to the focus setting on the camera and I'm determined to do better next time, plus I want to see the two Lancasters again anyway.
I'll give it a try using all focus points rather than just the centre point.
I wanted to try that at Little Gransden, but unfamiliarity with the camera, and lack of full instructions, meant I couldn't find how to alter the settings.

You're right, there's nothing like practice, and despite being into photography for over 40 years I never stop learning.
I could probably get to Shoreham this weekend, but I don't know if it's sold out.
 
You might be able to pau on the gate, I would check the web site. I am still getting to grips with the focus on my 70d so hopefully tomorrow will see some improvement.
 
Bummer!
I just heard the Canadian Lanc won't be flying this weekend due to an engine problem suffered at Bournemouth.
Since that was a major reason for me to go to Shoreham it looks like I'll give it a miss and hope they get everything fixed for Duxford.
 
Brian G said:
Bummer!
I just heard the Canadian Lanc won't be flying this weekend due to an engine problem suffered at Bournemouth.
Since that was a major reason for me to go to Shoreham it looks like I'll give it a miss and hope they get everything fixed for Duxford.
Click to expand...

Me too, except that I already have my ticket and might not get to see her at another show. Hope they get her fixed as I might try and get to Duxford now
 
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