Air show this weekend

[Tri Danimal]

Hey, guys and gals, I am going to be at an airshow this weekend, Huntington Beach Airshow in Southern California. I am wondering what you guys would recommend for camera settings? I am guessing its going to be a bright sunny day, but here is the forcast. I will have my full kit with me, Im hoping to get some good use out of the new Sony 18-105mm that gets delivered Wednesday or Thursday. You can be certain that I will share my photos with you guys for critiques.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Shadowman]

Check out some of Richard's (rpcrowe) shots and see if the 105mm will give you the reach you'll need, regarding shutterspeed, unless there are some prop planes (some shooters use slower shutterspeed to blur the propellers) shoot as fast as you can.

[rpcrowe]

The reach needed at an airshow is predicated by the distance from shooting position to the planes. With larger airshows and high performance aircraft, the viewing public is kept pretty far back from the aircraft as a safety measure in case of a mishap. With some smaller airshows and slower performing airplanes, you can often get a bit closer to the action...

Of course, you can shoot an airshow with any focal length lens, However, to get a larger image of the planes, I will usually want at least a 200mm lens on a crop sensor camera and that is fairly short for my use.

An exception to this is not an actual airshow but, the Blue Angels practice at their base of El Centro, California. I can shoot from close to the end of the runway and the planes pass close overhead when taking off and landing.

BTW: as mentioned... I use the fastest shutter speed possible when shooting jet aircraft but I try to stay at or below 1/100 second for prop aircraft in order not to freeze the propellers...

If I were to pick a great camera/lens combination for general airshow use, it would be the Canon 7D2 with the Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS ii lens... I can mount this lens on my A6500 with the MC-11 adapter that came with the kit when I bought the camera used but, I am not sure that the AF with this combination is quite up to the task. I have not practiced enough with the A6500 to know if it would or would not be adequate for fast targets like aircraft.

Sony has some long focal length lenses but, they are pretty darn expensive (not that the Canon 100-400 ii is cheap).

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Daniel - I was down there on Friday. You could reach out and touch Catalina Island it was so clear. I shot with my D7000 w/18-200 on. You could get pretty close if you're down on the sand. Looking forward to seeing your shots.
I posted some of mine over on the TalkEmount site as posting pictures here is a lost art to me.

[Tri Danimal]

Daniel - I was down there on Friday. You could reach out and touch Catalina Island it was so clear. I shot with my D7000 w/18-200 on. You could get pretty close if you're down on the sand. Looking forward to seeing your shots.
I posted some of mine over on the TalkEmount site as posting pictures here is a lost art to me.

Can you share the link at least?


I was shooting om my A7iii w/90mm. We were not at the sand but down at a friends house about 1/2 mile from the beach. We were right under the approach for the back of the flight box where the aircraft were coming from inland to the beach. Also, I guess lightroom just pushed out an update and now its not working on my omputer so I have to figure out what the problem is with LR so I can pull photos off my SD cards.

[jllaurado]

Aside from those great tips, i´ll give you another one ... get there as early as you can

I went to the monthly airshow in Madrid, early this month and didn´t arrive early, so i had lots of problems moving around, lot of trouble finding a good spot, and many heads in most of my photos.