Dayton Airshow 2009

drdoak

I just finished sorting through and processing my shots from the Dayton Airshow this year. Thought I'd share some of them and see if I can't extract a few tips to try out next year based on what I did and didn't do right.

Most of the day was overcast with relatively low cloud cover, though not enough to call off the show. I had a rented Canon 100-400mm L lens for this so hopefully I made decent use of it. A touch on the heavy side though...

I didn't do much to any of them beyond minor curves, color adjustment, and sharpening (at least not that I can remember).

1. USAF Heritage Flight (My best yet, if I say so myself)


2. Brazilian Smoke Team (note the blur on the right)


3. More Brazilians


4. Thunderbirds pre-show ritual


5. Thunderbird taxi


6. Under the diamond


7. Crossing Paths


8.Rolling in place


For #7 in particular, is it feasible to catch both aircraft sharply when they are moving that quickly relative to one another? What settings might work? I usually just get the one chance per year so my ability to experiment is somewhat limited . The Brazilian photos may look a little warm; that was a personal choice. As opposed to leaving the sky cool or bright white and blown out I made it a little warm and blown out...


Thanks for the comments! If you have time, please take a look at the other 35 or so photos in the gallery here: http://cml.smugmug.com/gallery/8969808_Ptaqd

Chris

sixdaemonbag

So for #7 (which I LOVE), what were you set at? Seems like a good place to start is to figure out how you had the camera set, then I'd bet some suggestions will start popping up.

moose135

Very nice work, Chris! You did a good job dealing with the weather! I've been shooting with the 100-400L for about 4 years now, it's my "go-to" lens for aviation work. You carry it around all day at an airshow, and eventually you get used to the weight, but it's a great lens for that use.

On the Thunderbird cross-over, I think the only thing you can do is use a high shutter speed (I try to keep it at 1/1000 or faster for jet demos) and hope for the best - actually, for any of those crossing maneuvers, I generally track one jet, keep the other eye open for the other, and start shooting when they get close. The cross-over you have here is a little easier, since they are both heading in the same direction and together in the frame when they start the cross.

I think my favorite of these is #6, the underside of the Diamond. Nice and sharp, colors look good, decent contrast against the clouds.

Nice shot of the Heritage Flight - with an aircraft as slow as the A-10, you can slow down the shutter for prop blur on the P-51 without having to worry about getting the A-10 blurry.

Not sure who was flying Glamorous Gal in the HF, but that is one of my favorite aircraft. It's based here on Long Island, with Warbirds Over Long Island. I see it all the time, I love shooting her, and know the regular pilot, Chris Baranaskas - sadly his father was killed in April in the crash of his P-40. Chris isn't checked out as part of HF, so someone else was flying it in your shot, but I assume he was there and probably flying it if it went up as a single-ship demo.

Very nice work on the other shots in your gallery as well! One note on your comment for photo 23, about the "Remove Before Flight" tag. The F-16 has an Emergency Power Unit, that provides electrical and hydraulic power to operate the flight controls and computers in the event of an engine failure, to allow the pilot to control the aircraft. The EPU is powered by hydrazine, a toxic rocket fuel. They have a safety pin (with the RBF flag) to prevent actuation on the ground. The ground crew remove the pin at the end of the runway to avoid any danger to the crowd should it be accidentally activated.

drdoak

sixdaemonbag wrote:

So for #7 (which I LOVE), what were you set at? Seems like a good place to start is to figure out how you had the camera set, then I'd bet some suggestions will start popping up.

Got a little distracted by work there... The settings for #7 were:
f/9.5
ISO 125
Exposure 1/250
+1/2 EV (To compensate for bright clouds)

IS Mode 2, Servo focus, spot eval

Before anyone points it out, yes I REALLY should have upped the ISO a bit . Not sure why that didn't occur to me while setting all the other stuff up...

Moose, thanks for the kind words. I'll have to practice keeping the off eye open without confusing myself and I'm especially happy to have learned about what that last RBF flag was for.. Unfortunately, I don't have a program to know who was flying GG this time around. I don't think it landed between doing the single plane demo and the HF though. Did he/you make it out to Gathering of Mustang Legends a couple years ago?

Thanks!