Douglas L
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 Re: Another look at the G 200-600mm lens | |
yodog54 wrote:
Post edit...I see someone inquired about your technique earlier, but I will still ask for myself...
I love your aviation photos Douglas and you do such an amazing job. May I ask how you approach shooting the jets? I know that for prop planes you need to dial down the shutter speed to around 1/125s to get the prop blur and then it's perfecting panning technique. On the jets, are you shooting shutter priority with auto-ISO and mostly -0.3 exposure compensation. Seems like most of the shots are around 1/4000s...do you still pan even at those high shutter speeds? I love shooting airshows and go every year to the local airshow, but my keeper rate is dismally low. I've been shooting with either the Sony 100-400 or 200-600 on my a7rIVa body. I also struggle with what AF mode to use. As I recall, I was using continuous AF but experimented with wide, center, and tracking AF but unable to conclude what works best there. For jets, I turn off image stabilization. I would appreciate any advice you might have to share. Thank you!
Mike
Thank you very much Mike! Practice makes improvement. In the last 13 years since I started serious in shooting airshows, I have been to probably 50 or 60 airshows, this year I may go to 10.
For me, jets are MUCH easier to shoot than prop planes. For shooting props in slow shutter speed to get the prop blur, "spray and pray" is really the answer for me. My panning skill sucks. I get maybe 1 out of 25 that's decently sharp enough that I can work on, the rest are just trash. In the last 2 years, for props I used a variable ND filter to bring down the shutter speed without shooting at f16+, I set the ISO at 100. For jets I use manual shutter speed, aperture, and auto ISO. I use exposure compensation depending on the subject. If the subjects are the predominantly light color, such as the Thunderbirds, I would use -0.3 or even -0.7 exposure compensation. I really like the easy access to exposure compensation on Sony bodies. The problem is sometimes I forget to change it back when the subject changes. As for shutter speed, for fast jets I usually use 1/3200 or 1/4000, for slow cargo jets or bombers, 1/2000 is plenty fast. I may use higher shutter speed if the light is really bright.
IMHO, airshows are not that demanding on AF, because the planes are pretty big and their flying path is predictable, nothing like tracking erratic small birds. I got some very good shots with my A7RIII, I think I used subject tracking in the A7RIII, don't really remember. Sometimes if you let the camera to pick the focus point, it may pick the bright white smoke trails. I will try the A7RV's plane subject detection next month to see how it goes. I think if you are really after getting nice opposing passes shots, a high frame rate camera would really help. For airshows, the only time I ever use 30 FPS in my A1 is for the opposing passes. BTW, I leave the lens stabilization on “2” all the time, even when shooting at high shutter speed, I know I will forget to switch it back on if I switch if off.
Feel free to pm me with any questions. I think I am getting way off topic in this thread. Also in the "City, Street & Architecture" forum, there is the famous "Mustang Air to Air" sub-forum, some of the folks there are really masters in this craft. I am just a newbie compared to them.
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