Recommendations for shooting air show

[freeradical]

It looks like the Delta breeze will be cooling Sacramento this Sunday, so I just might drag myself out to the Air Show at Mather.

I plan on using my Nikon FA (35mm film camera), which of course has matrix metering, but would it be better to simply to shoot in aperture or shutter speed priority and simply give my shots an extra stop or so exposure? I'm leaning towards the matrix metering since as an aircraft moves, the lighting can change from back, to side, to front lighting quite quickly.

Is an 80-200mm zoom long enough? Mine is a constant F4 zoom. I could put a 2X tele-extender on it, but I'd lose two stops of light.

I have a max shutter speed of 1/4000 of a second.

Is ISO 400 speed film fast enough? I have a couple rolls of ISO 800 speed film if it isn't. Using the sunny 16 rule, with the 800 speed film and the tele-extender, and when the aperture is set at F4, I'm getting F8's worth of light which means that the shutter speed should be 1/4000 of a second.

[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!

[JPK]

Guns don't kill people, experimental aircraft at airshows does!

JPK

[M>B>]

Watch out for planes falling on your head!

[space-time]

I shot an air show back in June. It was the Thunderbirds, and they were so fast I had a hard time following the planes with my 28-105 mm zoom (with 1.5 crop factor that would be about 157 mm). I think 80-200 should be fine. regarding metering, I am not familiar with nikon, sorry. if this were digital I would say you could bracket the hell out of it, but with Film that's not always the best option. I don't remember which ISO I used on my Pentax, I could look it up later. giid luck and post some pictures

[btfc]

"would it be better to simply to shoot in aperture or shutter speed priority and simply give my shots an extra stop or so exposure?"

I used to shoot some sporting events (i.e. hockey, skiing) with aperture priority and EV compensation.

[DP]

You don't need to have an extremely fast shutter speed if you intend to pan.

[Racer X]

M A V I C wrote:
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.

[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.

[freeradical]

Uncle Wig wrote:
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.