Airshow Photography
Discussion
Are airshows the most difficult thing to photograph?
After 30 years of popping in and out of photography as an enthusiastic amateur, I tried to get some shots of the Lancasters and Vulcan (and many others) at Little Gransden on Sunday. Not having done airshows for many years, I encountered many difficulties which meant that - looking at the results - my success rate was about 20 percent (shots taken to acceptable results).
Hurdles included:
1. Trying to locate a grey aircraft against a grey sky at great distance with a long lens.
2. Once located, trying to zoom in and pan with it to get a decent shot without anything getting in the way. (Ironically, one of the best shots turned out to be one of the fastest-moving stunt planes at close range!)
3. Shooting directly into the sun - all the most interesting stuff was shot towards the sun and I was trying to best-guess the exposure compensation.
4. Getting the shot before the damn aircraft has become a speck in the distance!
5. Trying to get an interesting 'aspect' of the aircraft - too easy to press the shutter and get everything as a straight side-on shot.
6. Trying not to knock my glasses off every time I put the viewfinder to my eye! How do speccy-wearers cope with this?
Tips, commiserations and criticism all welcome. (Camera was a Sony NEX-6 with 55-210 kit lens.)
After 30 years of popping in and out of photography as an enthusiastic amateur, I tried to get some shots of the Lancasters and Vulcan (and many others) at Little Gransden on Sunday. Not having done airshows for many years, I encountered many difficulties which meant that - looking at the results - my success rate was about 20 percent (shots taken to acceptable results).
Hurdles included:
1. Trying to locate a grey aircraft against a grey sky at great distance with a long lens.
2. Once located, trying to zoom in and pan with it to get a decent shot without anything getting in the way. (Ironically, one of the best shots turned out to be one of the fastest-moving stunt planes at close range!)
3. Shooting directly into the sun - all the most interesting stuff was shot towards the sun and I was trying to best-guess the exposure compensation.
4. Getting the shot before the damn aircraft has become a speck in the distance!
5. Trying to get an interesting 'aspect' of the aircraft - too easy to press the shutter and get everything as a straight side-on shot.
6. Trying not to knock my glasses off every time I put the viewfinder to my eye! How do speccy-wearers cope with this?
Tips, commiserations and criticism all welcome. (Camera was a Sony NEX-6 with 55-210 kit lens.)
The_Jackal said:
Do you shoot in RAW, so that you have a better chance of correcting exposure problems.
Someone recently posted some pics of an airshow where all the planes were underexposed, all this required was raising the shadows slider in Lightroom (or equivalent program).
I shoot simultaneously JPEG and RAW (or ARW - Sony's version) and play about with the RAW files, although I only have a trial version of DxO Optics and Sony's own image editor software to manipulate things with.Someone recently posted some pics of an airshow where all the planes were underexposed, all this required was raising the shadows slider in Lightroom (or equivalent program).
Flickr piccies: https://www.flickr.com/photos/charliedelta54/sets/...
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