My first Airshow

Well my New Years Resolution was to do something different with my photography, I've done a Glamour shoot, I've done a Railway shoot, and now I've done my first ever Airshow

A hot sunny day in Rhyl got me my first taste of trying to capture things a little bigger than my usual flying subjects, I also met another PU member Chris, who admitted he didn't frequent the forum often (shame on him:lol

[IMG]http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j168/impotentspider/IMGP6580-1.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j168/impotentspider/IMGP6698.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j168/impotentspider/IMGP7125.jpg[/IMG]

C&C always welcome especially from you experts at this sort of stuff.

PS: how the heck do you capture a Tornado and get it sharp

Nothing much wrong with these at all - very nice.

I'd be inclined to up the contrast a little on the Extra, and bring up the shadows and the mid-tone contrast on the Spitfire and the Stearman.

The Tornado is going a lot faster, so simply pointing the camera in the right direction is harder. You can get away with a much shorter exposure than you would have used for these, since there's no prop to look stupid if it's frozen.

Another vital bit of kit for photographing the Tornado is earplugs, IMO. The sheer noise level makes it a lot harder to concentrate on the physical coordination required otherwise.

These look pretty good, better than my efforts (which is why I didn't post them).

I was at Rhyl as well, in fact I was up at Bodelwyddan at the classic car show. I came down into town on the bus so I could photograph the steam train as it went through, then catch a few of the air show, then back up to the castle. Unfortunately the bus was a bit late (because of traffic), the train a few minutes early and I badly underestimated how long it takes to walk to the other side of the estuary, so I missed that. And the air show didn't really start until about 2:25, and I had to get the bus at 2:30 so the few I took were from outside the railway station so not the best vantage point.

Did you pay the £15-odd to go on the special photographers vantage point? There didn't seem to be anyone on there when I passed.

I like these

Can't help with advice though as my next airshow will be my first

Didn't even know about it, besides I went down with family and sat on the steps while they were on the beach, my bum is still sore from several hours sat on concrete
In fact only heard about the show as my son and daughter in law were going down to visit her parents who live there.

I did fill a 16GB card, followed by a 4GB followed by a 2GB then I had to get the 4GB out of my spare body and I managed to fill that as well, although I was shooting RAW+ so I expect I should have got a couple of good ones
Note to self: get a couple of 32GB cards for the next Airshow.

These were quick fixes for PU Chris, but I have a lot of PP to do on half of the pics anyway, I somehow managed to change the white balance from AWB to daylight flourescent after filling the 16BG card: of course with the bright sunshine I couldn't see the odd coloured sky on the LCD, when I got home I was about to post on here asking if anyone had had strange colour casts with different cards

Not bad at all, plenty of prop blur which is always nice to see. As Chris says, they do need a slight lift in the shadows to bring out more detail but I would be happy with them. I tend to spot meter and use +1 at air shows which seems to be about right most of the time.

Out of interest what lens were you using?

Tornado : Don't use the full zoom as 90% of the time you wont be able to find the ruddy thing so be prepared to shoot wider and crop. Also use as fast a shutter speed as you can.

Roll on Bournemouth air show.

Whats the betting it rains just like the last few years.

I used the Bigma Mike, what else

It was so bright I was using anything from f16 right up to f38 along with shutter speeds of up to 1/750 and higher, anything else and I was getting over exposure warnings, I used TAv with spot metering and centre point focus on AF-C, finding the aircraft with the lens zoomed out then following them and maintaining focus lock while zooming in on them, started off using the monopod but found it easier to just handhold.

I had camera set to meter at -1 as mine tends to blow highlights quite easily.

That'll be the spot metering, especially if the background is cloud.

Still, if you can keep the thing focused using centre-spot only, you've a steadier hand than I.

For most of my ground-to-air pictures, I use centre-weighted metering and AF-point auto select, which mostly doesn't trash the highlights and makes it easier to keep the subject in focus.

However, if the background is white cloud (which is MUCH brighter than blue sky), that means a lot of shadow recovery is often needed.

If the sky is white cloud I tend not to bother these days and just watch the show

Well I guess I was lucky with blue skies

And the Tornado shots weren't that bad, I just had more out of focus and tail shots than any of the other aircraft.

Had a play with highlights and shadows on these.

[IMG]http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j168/impotentspider/tornado2.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j168/impotentspider/tornado1.jpg[/IMG]

And something you don't see everyday, apparently.

[IMG]http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j168/impotentspider/bigun.jpg[/IMG]

I absolutely LOVE that one of the two Tornadoes. The front one is a touch soft, but catching the back one like that in the front one's exhaust is really, really excellent.

You should do a lot more with that one, I think - it's an absolutely marvellous capture and very unusual indeed.

BTW - if you're going to play with highlights and shadows, you need to boost the midtone contrast as well.

Wuss

That second Tornado shot, Just plain WOW!!!
As Chris says, the front one is a tad soft, but the efect on the second one more than makes up for it.

To be honest, the first one is just as good. All the parrallel lines running bottom right to top left ( or do you see it as top left to bottom right? )

Lovely pair of shots.

Nice shots there Alan, I'm going to Blackpool airshow next week and wondered what are the best settings to use on my k100d as I always tend to get the frozen propeller instead of blurred?

Jim