Airshow advice please :)

PJwebbs

PJwebbs

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Name
Paul
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Hi guys,

I am off to the air show at Waddington on Sunday and as I have never pointed my camera at a plane I was wondering what kind of settings I should be looking for. I think I will have trouble exposing the aircraft without blowing out the background in this sunny weather... hmm... not sure. Anyways, any advice would be lovely!

Thanks!

Paul.
 
Av mode,Ai servo, +1 exposure, shutter speed 1,000 - 2,000 , just bump the iso up a tad.
 
Helos and props will need a lower shutter speed to blur the props /rotors
 
Pretty much all fast jets this year, which im pleased about :) rumour of prince harry in his apache though
 
Didnt look at list so wasnt sure
Heading to yeovilton and legends next week
 
Hi Paul,

The weather is set to be amazing tomorrow with wall to wall blue sky so you shouldn't have any problems at all getting good exposure. Waddington can be backlit for the first part of the day as you're shooting from the north-west side of the runway pretty much straight into the sun early on but it shouldn't take too long to get high and swing round. Maybe have a wander round the ground displays first until the light improves for the flying display if you have concerns about exposure. Alternatively you could always go for silhouette shots which can be a great effect.

I respectfully can't quite agree on the above advice, automatically adding +1 stop exposure compensation doesn't make any sense without knowing how the camera is behaving on the day. Filling large bits of the frame with a light coloured aircraft one minute and a dark one the next can play havoc with settings! Keeping at +1 might mean blowing your highlights which is a really bad thing if you're a JPEG shooter and isn't great even if you shoot RAW. I'm also not quite sure why 1/1000th-1/2000th is an ideal range for shutter speed on an air show either. As long as the shutter speed is a bit quicker than your focal length you should be fine, there's no need to crank the ISO up to keep it within those ranges. If you're using, for example, a 400mm lens then trying to keep it anywhere above 1/500th of a second will work perfectly fine and that will be very easy indeed to achieve on a perfectly clear bright day.

For props it actually gives a very pleasing effect if you purposely use a slower shutter speed to blur the propellers, something more down in the region of 1/100th or maybe even slower if you can manage it. It doesn't make a difference with jet aircraft but blurry props give a great sense of movement.

What kind of camera and lens are you planning to use? I'm just formatting cards and charging batteries for the show tomorrow, can't wait! :)
 
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General rule, a prop plane around 1/160 or 1/200, a jet, as fast as you can, ideally 1/1600.

Use S or Tv Mode and see if you need to compensate.
 
Cheers for the advice guys, I'm taking a k-5ii and a sigma 70-300, which is playing up so I may have to use a pentax 70-210 f4 which is very sharp and nice but manual focus and maybe a tad short?
 
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