where am I going wrong...?

[nickjohnwatson]

Went up to Newcastle airport to photograph the red arrows arriving yesterday evening, it wasn't dark but all of my shots are rubbish, if I remember correctly my settings were AI focus, is on, ISO 800, av mode varying from f5.6 to f8, spot metering and also partial metering, ill put a picture up later on as an example, my lens is the canon 55-250is, I got enough reach as the planes were fairly low but most of them are blurred and the ones that are sharp don't really have much detail. What settings do you guys use for photographing planes? Cheers, nick

 

[Cagey75]

First thing I notice, you had the IS on. You turn this off when shooting moving subjects. There's your problem I would say.

 

[ChrisJ_SLH]

Shutter priority may have been a better bet too with a higher ISO to achieve a reasonable aperture. Early evening and the light would have been dropping which may have dropped your shutter speed too low. Have a look at the EXIF and see what shutter speed you were achieving.

 

[viewfromthenorth]

The camera may not have actually locked the focus on. I struggled at the Southport air show last week as the light was rubbish.

 

[Phil Young]

Yeah the problem is aperture priority rather than shutter.

 

[nickjohnwatson]

Cool cheers for the replies, bugged the hell outta me as I wanted to print a few ffor my better half as she's obsessed with the reds but the pictures all come out horrible! Think I'm better off sticking with things that don't move lol

 

[Phil Young]

Cool cheers for the replies, bugged the hell outta me as I wanted to print a few ffor my better half as she's obsessed with the reds but the pictures all come out horrible! Think I'm better off sticking with things that don't move lol

Just use the right settings next time

Out if curiosity, what were the shutter speeds like?

 

[viewfromthenorth]

Aperture priority is favoured by many aircraft photographers, once you point the camera at the sky it tends to give you fast shutter speeds anyway, although if the light is poor they obviously come down. Given you were using ISO800 I'd guess you'd accounted for that though.

 

[nickjohnwatson]

I think the shutter speeds were around 1/400 1/500 maybe a bit quicker? Would having a polarizer filter on make a difference?

 

[viewfromthenorth]

That would have slowed the shutter speed down I'd have guessed. 1/400 is a bit slow for fast moving jets though. Maybe one for the transport and motorsport sub forum guys?