If you're going to the airshow primarily to take pictures, I don't think 650 images will cover you for the entire day. If you can borrow a memory card or two, I would try to at least double that amount. I budget for 1500 shots per day roughly, which in my case is three 8GB cards.
Shooting RAW is an excellent choice, since you'll need all the control and flexibility you can get.
Rodolfo Paiz wrote:
If you're going to the airshow primarily to take pictures, I don't think 650 images will cover you for the entire day. If you can borrow a memory card or two, I would try to at least double that amount. I budget for 1500 shots per day roughly, which in my case is three 8GB cards.
Shooting RAW is an excellent choice, since you'll need all the control and flexibility you can get.
Thanks! I'm headed toward Ohio and GML in a couple hours. Maybe I'll pick up some more SD cards as I head out of town. Really looking forward to this.
I tried to be careful not to shoot too many on moto-drive since the Mark III has this reputation of tracking and focus issues. So single shots slows things down and thus reduces the number of culls to go through
Yesterday I shot raw to the 2 gig SDs and j-peg to the 2gig CFs. Today i just shot everything in jpeg - since i don't really have a raw workflow that i am comfortable doing and I'm working on Photoshop CS on this laptop on the road anyway. (I went to wal-mart and picked up some additional CF cards just in case - its a 100 miles to the next costco - so get em before you leave). Yesterday I shot up 3 (x2) 2 gig cards. Today I shot up 2 2gig cards - being careful and self editing my trigger finger. I think I got more keepers today - but won't know till around 3am - so I better get to work.
There were 100,000+ through the gates today ( i think nearly all of them that weren't shooting film through a 100mm nikor... had a100-400 attached to their Digital cameras - never seen so many 100-400s.) - so be early and plan on parking being slow in and out. oh... and forget about the line about me being the short guy with a camera... i'll be the only one there with an Atlanta Falcons business card holder on my green lowepro backpack.
And last but not least - Rodolfo, thanks a ton for the passes - and my dad thanks you as well - they have made the difference on this trip and I appreciate it a lot. In fact today I had the honor of meeting a former pilot in the seat next to yours that had flown 70 missions in P-51 Mustangs and various p-38s and 47s back in wwII. (He looked to be about 90 and he was wearing his original bomber jacket that he wore during the war.) Great person to talk to and really the reason for this airshow. A geat experience.
Edited by jbear2000 on Sep 29, 2007 at 07:56 PM GMT
Man you guys have impressed me and pissed me off all at the same time. The images here are fantastic and inspiring....They inspired me to shoot the Battle of Britain fly by we had here. Using my trusty Canon 1DMK2 I fired off hundreds of frames, shot around 80 to 125th of a second to get the prop spin. Out of all that, I got two shots of the Lanc, and one shot of the Hurricane!! Thats it!! The rest of my images were way out of focus. I'm either getting to old or two weak to hand hold anything anymore!
Here's a few from Friday. Didn't get a chance to go through too many yet today. All with a 1D and 300 F4 IS, maybe some with the 1.4X.
Should have brought the 20D along as well. (My partner needed to borrow my MkII for a paying gig.) Was thinking travel light. Except it was too light as my waist bag held my wide angle for some static shots, but had to carry the 300 in my hand when using the 20-35. Some sort of belt system seems to be in order, maybe a good Christmas present I rarely switch lenses for my sports shooting, so the issue rarely came up before.
Hope you all enjoy. Again, it was a wonderful show.
2 B-17 Had the pleasure of speaking with some vets in Tuscon a few years back, amazing stories they had to tell. Great museum if you get a chance to go sometime. (Pima)
jomor wrote:
Using my trusty Canon 1DMK2 I fired off hundreds of frames, shot around 80 to 125th of a second to get the prop spin.
First, great to see that you remembered to blur the prop. Most people don't, so you're above-average there already. Besides, I bet those three photos look great; and they're three new photos you didn't have before! Now, as a way to increase your keeper rate: I don't know how fast the engines/props spin on those old birds, but 1/80th is only really necessary on very-very-very-slowly-turning engines (say, a Piper Cub). Try the following trick next time you get around airplanes in flight...
Start at 1/320. A few airplanes actually manage to show good-enough prop blur at that shutter speed, and you're far more likely to get sharp shots of course. Take two or three quick shots, then check them in your LCD. Zoom in on the props. If they look blurred enough to you, then great... you've found your shutter speed for the day. Or at least for that type of airplane on that day!
If not, drop down to 1/250 and repeat. Even in my very brief experience so far, I've found that quite a few airplanes look very nice at 1/200, where you're a heck of a lot of more likely to get sharp images than at 1/80. My guess is that you probably just need a little practice to get comfortable with aircraft motion... after all, every new type of subject requires some learning and new muscle memory.
My guess is that 1/160 and 1/200 will be great starting points for shutter speed, and should definitely improve your keeper rate from this shoot.
jomor wrote:
Man you guys have impressed me and pissed me off all at the same time. The images here are fantastic and inspiring....They inspired me to shoot the Battle of Britain fly by we had here. Using my trusty Canon 1DMK2 I fired off hundreds of frames, shot around 80 to 125th of a second to get the prop spin. Out of all that, I got two shots of the Lanc, and one shot of the Hurricane!! Thats it!! The rest of my images were way out of focus. I'm either getting to old or two weak to hand hold anything anymore!...Show more →
jomor I can relate, so many truly talented people here. If I'd not seen a picture of Jim Wilson I'd swear he had three legs to get that sharpness from those shutter speeds. Shooting at 300-400mm below 1/250 sec hand held while panning a plane at 100 to 300 mph is tough. I have to remind myself some of the very best post here, and I am slowly getting better.
By the way would love to see Lancaster and Hurricane shots, historic birds all too rare here where I live.
Thanks for your helpful tips. I will try and use the process of starting with a higher shutter speed 250 and work my way down. I honestly thought that even the old birds needed slow shutters to get blur.
I live in Ottawa Ontario and we here are very lucky to have gentleman by the name of Micheal Potter. Rich millionaire who wants the public to experience and enjoy the old War birds of Canada's past. I'm going to volunteer at his air strip, I hope he take me in. I can't imagine who great it will be. He owns a Spit mk9, Hurricane mk3 I think, Mustang in RAF colours, and is working on a Swordfish. These aircraft are airborne every Wednesday during the summer, for special events. The Lanc is part of a larger collection in Hamilton Ontario, by the way if any of you are interested they have finished the restoration of a Halifax and it will be flying this coming year, or so I'm told.
Great shots there from Friday - the clouds all day were perfect and the way those smoke filled shots look are fantastic. Saturday was cloudless but it sure made for a nice blue sky. Thought Sunday was so dismal with the hazy cloud layer that I ended up leaving early.
Here are a couple more... looks like i join all the other Mark III owners in waiting for a fix!
Rodolfo Paiz wrote:
Even in my very brief experience so far, I've found that quite a few airplanes look very nice at 1/200, where you're a heck of a lot of more likely to get sharp images than at 1/80. My guess is that you probably just need a little practice to get comfortable with aircraft motion... after all, every new type of subject requires some learning and new muscle memory.
My guess is that 1/160 and 1/200 will be great starting points for shutter speed, and should definitely improve your keeper rate from this shoot.
Prop blur is definately one interesting area to discuss about. There are so many aspects that one might want to think of when shooting propeller driven planes. For me the shutter speed to start from is usually determined by the number of prop blades and the shooting situation.. For example when the aircraft is on takeoff or already flying (a2a or airshows), one usually doesn't need as slow shutter speeds as when the plane is landing. And one good rule of thumb is that planes with 2-blade prop need a half longer shutter speed compared to a 4-blader. 3-blader is somewhere between those two. Oh well, this should be pretty obvious :P But I guess there is one thing more important than any other, when chasing prop blurs: What kind of prop blur do you want? That is the key factor to a desired result. Let's take a couple of examples:
With a regular "Lycosaur"-powered 2-blader I usually want to "play it safe" at first, and play around with some faster speeds. Here I started from 1/200s, and got some blur:
I then stepped down to 1/125s, which gives the following result. To me, this doesn't look as good as the one with faster shutter speed. For some reason I don't like this kind of blurs with 2-bladers. In other words I like to have the blur less than 1/4 of circle, or a full circle. Anything between just doesn't look "real" to me. This photo is an example of that:
Some basic rules that I have learned to live with, when I want a full circle prop in flight:
2-blader: 1/60s - 1/80s
3-blader: 1/125s
4-blader: 1/160s
Depending on the kind of plane/propeller, start with those and you can't go much wrong. Except with warbirds and other old radial engined planes (and russian built aerobats ), which often need a step or two slower shutter speeds. Unfortunately I haven't had too many chances to photograph those...
And even though usually the famous full circle is what every photographer likes to get, there are situations, when a full circle just doesn't work as well than a "fan-like" one. Here's an example of where I think the full circle doesn't look even near as good:
Or what do you think? At least to me the white painted propeller gets too "dense" and therefore blocks way too much of the plane itself...
Anyways, like I said, this is an interesting issue to discuss about. And there are probably almost as many point of views to this matter as there are photographers. But it would be fun, if you could share your ideas, likes/dislikes, point of views etc. on different types of blurs
Vey kool shots all, been enjoying everyone. Alright...Gotta ask...What are those weird looking wire configurations on some of those planes Like on the left wing of the last picture of Mikko's pictures.
Wow. I had an amazing time at GML Sunday. What a great, great show. It was my first time trying to take photos of fast moving planes. And the sky was not-so-great for color. Plus we were often shooting into the sun. But I might have a few keepers. Got to put them all on the computer and have a look to see. Thanks for all the tips. I definitely got some nicer photos as a result. I'll post photos later, after I've had a chance to look through them. Maybe I'll sign up for a flikr account or something, to have a place to show them.
Bill Gass wrote:
Vey kool shots all, been enjoying everyone. Alright...Gotta ask...What are those weird looking wire configurations on some of those planes Like on the left wing of the last picture of Mikko's pictures.
Thanks,
~Bill~
Sight devices.
A reference for aerobatic maneuvers, so the pilot can be sure he is flying 90° or 45° lines precisely. Just put the line on the horizon and voilá!
), which often need a step or two slower shutter speeds. Unfortunately I haven't had too many chances to photograph those...