Thunderbird / Air Show Photo Critique and Assist

[jaypoc]

The photo here was shot at the 2009 Jones Beach Air Show. It was shot on a Canon EOS 40D with the Canon 70-300 f4-5/6 IS lens at 250mm, ISO 100, 1/800 at f/10.

The only post processing done in photoshop was an adjustment to the levels and I cropped the frame tighter around the Jet.

I'm curious if there's any other air-show photographers, what I could do to get these pictures to be sharper. Is it a limitation of my equipment or is it something I can work on and improve?

[jetrim]

I used to shoot a lot of airshows in my film days and a few things I learned were that:
1) telecoverters are indespensible.
2) shutter speed trumps aperture (you are so far away that there won't be a noticable difference between f/5.6 and f/10)
3) autofocu can almost never lock on fast enough and hold it while the suject is move 350-400mph. Much bettrt to switch to manual and set focus for infinity.

[SmartWombat]

Teleconverters are a substitute for a long lens, but they will lose quality and a stop or two of speed.

This image needs a little correction for colour fringes which will make it look better, but yes it is blurred. I can't really tell from this whether it's motion blur, panning slightly off, or focus slightly off, or all of the above.

[jaypoc]

Are the teleconverters compatible with my lens? I have heard they're only compatible with the L series lenses.

[SmartWombat]

Canon's website should tell you what's compatible.
It depends on the design of your lens.
The Canon teleconverters have a small (1.5cm) lens that sticks out the front, into the rear of your lens. They don't even work with all L lenses.

So for example they won't work on a 24-70 L because the rear element of that is almost flush with the lens mount. But it works with the 70-200 L and 100-400 L because there's plenty of gap to fix the converter into.

I started with a 2x converter but the quality loss is too much for me.
Using my 1.4x is fine (even though it's the old MkI) and I regularly use that.

I would suggest that a wider aperture longer lens, though more expensive, will in the end give you better results. While the AF wasn't fast enough for motorsport, the Sigma 80-400 gave quite good images. I exchanged it for the Canon after a fortnight because it didn't do what I wanted, probably would be OK for wildlife.