Flying Legends Practice Day 10/07/09

It's an old trick I learnt in the army Mike

Not that I ever was.

Seriously, this was as near as I got to freezing the props on a photo at Shoreham -

[IMG]http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc222/Oggy3323/Lanc.jpg[/IMG]

-that was at 1/3200 seconds.

Thinking about it, typical prop rpm would be about 2000, which would be 33.3 revs per second. Each revolution would be 360 degrees so that would be 12000 degrees per second. So an exposure of 1/1000 of a second would cover 12 degrees of movement of the prop, and 1/1600th would give you 7.5 degrees.

QED

My Lancaster shots at Bournemouth were all under 1/1000 and they all have very minimal blur .. this was 1/750 and there is nothing there to talk of. I'm presuming aperture or iso makes no difference?

I do not think the aperture would make a lot of difference Mike. The ISO might make a tiny difference. As to the speed - it's a law of diminishing returns. If you half the speed I doubt you will get twice as sharp an image.

Now to the bit that really defeats me.

The top aircraft photographers are using exposures in the order of 1/100 seconds to get real prop blur, and still producing crystal clear images of airframes.

Bit like sports photographers getting sharp motorcycle shots with blurred wheels? One difference is head on, fortunately most prop powered planes are not fst enough, head on to spoil depth, yet a slow shutter will still provide blur and "freeze" the fuselage.

They have proved it can be done. So the only how, is how?

Regards

I think what has helped the Sea Fury Shot is the better lighting, (Though i love the framing on this shot too) The others appear to be in shadow but with relatively bright sky behind, Always a difficult situation to expose for. You could have benefited from a couple of stops smaller aperture if the lighting had been better for you. And to be honest it takes a while to get used to panning with such a long lens. Perhaps if you had the opportunity to use it regularly for a whole season you would probably see an improvement in sharpness as you become more attuned to the lens.

Regards - Pete.

Good point. It's relative velocity not absolute that causes most of the difficulty.

Thus far I had been relying on high shutter speeds to get a sharp picture. It seems a better technique might be to rely more on accurate panning.

Personally, I don't like a frozen prop.

I don't tend to go any faster than 1/250s, myself.

At 1/320s, for instance, I think you're really pushing it.

Even 1/250s is a bit fast, sometimes.

Nice work Chris. I am still very much learning the trade. I am happy enough with what I have shot so far, but I agree, prop buur is good. Something to work on but probably next year now, or stick to turbines