The Airshow

[emiles]

Well I went home this weekend the airshow had come to Houston, so I thought I would take a few pictures. Also, the reason some of them are kind of grainy is because I just realized that my camera, instead of shooting at high quality was shooting at low....it has been fixed but I realized it AFTER the show was over. *sad face*

C&C is most appreciated.

The Air Force's F-16 Thunderbirds


The Air Force's F-16 Thunderbirds


Japanese Mitsubishi Zeros


My favorite - McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet

[n8]

Your compositions seem to be pretty good...pretty standard for air show shots, but still pretty good. I think the only real advise to offer on these considering the image quality is to always do a routine check of your gear and settings before going out to shoot. I did the same thing at our air show this year by shooting everything in spot or center weighted metering mode, so the exposures weren't too balanced. Thank goodness for shooting in raw though as I was able to save them.

[emiles]

Well these were shot from my street (I live close to the airfield where they do the show) so I has to doge trees and houses and such. The only reason I caught it was Mom asked me how many pictures I had left on the card and I said WAY TO MANY, then she asked if I had been shooting in high quality, and low and behold, I wasn't. *face palm*

@n8, what is shooting in RAW? I've seen multiple people say it but I have no idea what it is.

[n8]

@n8, what is shooting in RAW? I've seen multiple people say it but I have no idea what it is.

RAW is a format, like JPEG, TIFF, BMP, and things like that. You're probably familiar with jpeg, as that's what kind of files our cameras produce when we take a picture...expect when we use RAW however. One difference that may confuse you is that raw is a proprietary format of sorts, so different camera companies call it some thing different. Nikon calls theirs NEF...not sure what your canon calls it.

So what is it? A raw file basically contains all the photographic information your camera captures with every shot, whereas a jpeg tosses out a lot of information that your camera deems unneeded depending on your settings (color correction/enhancement, white balance, sharpening, etc...). So, the raw file keeps it all, and makes for a much bigger file as well, maybe 3x as big. I think I can fit maybe 1000 raw images on my 16gb card. If I shoot jpeg, I'd be hard pressed to have storage be an issue. So that's one down side. Another is that you have to process them afterwards as the camera doesn't do if for you, or at least not that extensively.

The benefits? All that extra information makes for a lot more flexibility in processing your image, which by the way, you need a dedicated program to do. If an exposure is bad, you have a range of about 8 exposure values that you can pull from. RAW is also a lossless format, so you can do whatever the hell you want to it with out degrading it. A jpeg saved over and over will lose quality as long as you're doing it in a raw editor anyway I think. Basically, if you absolutely need your image to great, and want to do some real in depth processing, use raw, but, for general shooting, and honestly, probably most shooting, jpeg will do you fine.

Go ahead and google for some more info, and if your camera is raw capable, I'm pretty sure that there's some freeware out there for that too.

[Marc2B4]

There isn't a sharp image among all of them posted. If I had to make a guess, you shot everything on program. I've shot literally hundreds of airshow, thousands of aircraft, from the ground, from the backseat. The first thing you learn is to crank up your shutter speed to at least 1/500. The second thing is to never, ever trust an in-camera light meter. On a bright sunny day, shooting aircraft flying overhead, I'd be shooting at ISO 100, bracketing my shots between 1/500@f8.0 and f 11. Try that and see what kind of results you come back with. That's just for jet aircraft. For prop driven aircraft, your SS has got to be at 1/125 or slower, or you'll be stopping the props of the aircraft. It'll look as if they're falling out of midair. Conversely, you're exposure settings again bracketing, will be 1/125 @f16 and f22. My troops when bring me great images with the props stopped and would get pissed when I'd take a paper punch to the negative or slide. If they were digital, I'd just delete them. They'd get highly pissed at me, but they'd learn. I only knew that because I made the same mistake when I was a young troop just learning to shoot aircraft.

[emiles]

@n8 - Thanks a bunch for the info

@Marc - Thanks for the info as well. It was my first time ever shooting planes in general (Prop or Jet) so I didn't really have any idea of what to do. I'm pretty sure though that I shot at a lower f (5.6 maybe) and your right, it did hurt the pictures. I did remember the props on the Zeros, I have seen the pictures where the planes look like they were falling and I didnt like it at all. Thanks for the advise again.

[Mc.Harrison]

Great photos I like F-16 pic the best.
Though your pics are really good but do keep in mind the tips you got above.
Hope to see more of your work soon