Recommendations for shooting air show

[srf1957]

Racer X wrote:
[quote=M A V I C]
I'm thinking a .50 cal BMG with tracer rounds should work pretty well. http://www.50bmgsupply.com/

Sounds like fun!

well, it WAS designed as an anti-aircraft round. Yes something a little newer would be better. Skysweeper

[Uncle Wig]

freeradical wrote:
[quote=Uncle Wig]
M>B>, that is NOT funny.

Free, your lens should be long enough. It's often hard to keep a moving airplane in the frame if you are zoomed in tight.

1/4000 will be great for jets, but at that shutter speed, propellers will be frozen which looks very weird in a photo. You want at least some prop blur so the airplane doesn't look like the engine just stopped. An airplane coming in for landing: the RPM will be very low so 1/250 or even less is wanted. Taxiing, even slower. My best taxiing shots are about 1/125 down to 1/60. For airplanes doing passes or aerobatics, the RPM will be higher and you can increase your shutter speed. But I wouldn't go much higher than 1/800 or you'll stop the prop.

You're going to shoot a lot o' film! This is one type of photography where digital has a major advantage. But of course many brilliant aviation photos are on film.

Thanks for the advice!

I should clarify something about this camera (Nikon FA). It has both matrix as well as center weighted average metering. When metering manually, only center weighted metering is available. In programmed mode, aperture priority, and shutter priority modes, I can use either metering method. However, when using matrix metering, the exposure compensation dial does not do anything. I kind of find this odd because I could do compensation by simply changing the film speed setting of the camera. So, if I wanted to overexpose ISO 400 film by a half a stop, I could simply set the meter for ISO 320. I don't know why Nikon engineered this limitation into the camera.
If you have blue skies, your matrix metering should be good. If it's overcast, you'll need to somehow overexpose to compensate. Otherwise you'll just have silhouettes of the planes.

Again, M>B>, your post sucks ass.

[OWC Jamie]

M>B> wrote:
Watch out for planes falling on your head!

That was awful wasn't it ?

I hope fr doesn't capture anything remotely as tragic.

Not even the tears of a toddler whose ice cream fell on the tarmac. :-)