Air Show Preparation

Spraying and Praying goes hand in hand with air shows.  The big plane that you see in the viewfinder turns into a tiny dark speck when the images are downloaded.  No one, not even your best friend is interested in looking at a thousand nearly identical specks.  

The Thunderbirds and Blue Angels are a photographers dream.  It's difficult to take a poor photo of them.  They are in perfect formation when they pass in front of the crowd.  Unfortunately they will not fly at the Offutt Air Force Base Air Show this weekend.   Military budget cuts have taken their toll.

Air Shows feature some of the latest military hardware as well as historical aircraft.    Propeller driven aircraft are much more difficult to photograph than jets.  It isn't difficult to stop a jet mod-air with a fast shutter speed.  While the same shutter speed  will stop a propeller plane, it also stops the  propeller so that the image doesn't look normal.  Ideally the plane should be sharp and the propeller should be blurred.

My air show preparation needs to include a lens that will make the aircraft bigger than a speck.  I need to use a show enough shutter speed to blur the propeller.  I need a very sharp lens along with the skill to make the aircraft sharp while the propeller blurs.

I researched air show photos from previous years.  I learned that the propellers of different aircraft blur differently at the same shutter speed.  In general 1/250 of a second is the fastest I can go and the blurs are much better at 1/125 and slower.   As a rule of thumb, the shutter speed should be no more than  the focal length of the lens.    That's a problem because a 135mm or 200mm lens isn't long enough to prevent airplane specks.

Longer lens present logistical problems.  They are heavy and I don't have the credentials that would remove me enough from the crowds to make a tripod feasible.   I think that I can handhold a 400mm lens long enough to capture the pass of an aircraft.

I'm fortunate to be able to shoot at 400mm with three different lens combinations.  Two of the combinations have IS and the third doesn't.  I can only take one lens.  I took thirty shots this afternoon to decide which lens to use.

The test needed to determine which lens produced the sharpest images while it was handheld.  I already know that most lens are sharper when stopped down a stop.  I decided to test the lens at f 8.  I took one test shot at ISO 100, 200 400, 800 and 1600.  This resulted in a shutter speed that increased a stop at each new ISO.  The faster shutter minimizes the amount of sharpness destroying shake. 

Spraying and Praying is the perception of an outside viewer.  Digital photography has made it possible to select the best of many similar images.  My preparation will allow me to pick my best images from a group that has big airplanes, sharp airplanes and realistically blurred propellers.