Airshows are go!
With the airshow season upon us and the RAF celebrating its 100th birthday, Mark Lynham tells you all you need to know about photographing birds of steel
With the airshow season upon us, check out Mark lynham’s tips on photographing aircraft
Airshows offer a great day out and a number of fantastic photographic opportunities. There will be something for everyone, whether you’re into the old Battle Of Britain type aircraft, fast modern military jets, the many air display teams or just wandering around the static displays and merchandise stalls. To capture the variety of subjects you can use different techniques and camera settings, some relatively straightforward and others requiring much more practice, such as panning with fast-moving aircraft or capturing the motion in the rotor blades of old aircraft or helicopters.
So the day of the airshow has finally arrived. You’ve bought your Super Earlybird Ticket; packed your bag with all your kit; charged all your batteries; taken as many memory cards as you can; remembered to pack your sunscreen, water and food – and it’s time to head off. With
the ever-increasing popularity of airshows it’s important to arrive early if you are planning to take certain shots, and particularly if you want to get a centre flight-line spot. Once there you can settle in for the day.
The weather
You can never quite predict the weather, so the best advice is to prepare yourself for all occasions. If it looks like it will be a sunny day, make sure you take some highfactor sunscreen, a hat and water to keep you hydrated. Baseball caps are great as you can turn them around when using the camera to add extra protection for your neck. You may be standing in the same spot for many hours, so have everything to hand, including your food for the day. It might also be a good idea to pack a lightweight raincoat and waterproof cover for your camera and lens, and ideally ones that will pack neatly into your equipment bag. Most decent bags also come with a waterproof cover.
The weather plays a large part in the shots that you will get, so you need to factor this into your images.
If there’s bright sunshine with no clouds then you want to see where the light is best on the displaying aircraft; at certain angles you may get harsh shadows, and shooting into the sun will put the aircraft into darkness. Nonetheless, there will be parts of each display where the light will work well on the aircraft, and it will be down to you to look for these. Don’t feel disappointed on a cloudy day; I personally favour clouds over a blue sunny sky as you can add so much more drama to an image with dark clouds. And even if there are just the odd clouds around on a sunny day, try taking shots that include them. This is something that is often overlooked in airshow photography, but a little cloud can add real impact.
Slow shutter and panning
Panning has to be the most essential technique in the arsenal of an aviation photographer and something worth spending time practising and mastering, as the results can be truly stunning. Panning involves slowing the shutter speed down and following your jet with an end result of a nicely blurred background while retaining a sharp image of the aircraft – thus evoking a feeling of movement. It’s ideal for not only take-off and landing shots, but also for planes taxiing in and out.
Try standing with your feet apart and facing forwards, using your hips to turn your body from left to right, or vice versa. Track the plane steadily in the viewfinder, using AI Servo focus mode (in Canon cameras) and single-point focus, and then fire off some shots using burst mode while continuing to track the plane as it comes by – hopefully you will have a couple of sharp shots. If your lens has image stabilisation, then switch this to mode 2 which is suitable for panning. I find that back button focusing also helps with panning.
Slowing the shutter is also essential for propeller and rotor blades, as there is nothing worse than seeing a Spitfire or a Lancaster with frozen propellers – it will just look like an Airfix model hanging from your ceiling. Of course the ‘Holy Grail’ of any propeller shot is to get a full circle, but this will require tremendous practice and you will need shutter speeds of under 1/80sec to be able to achieve this.
Camera settings
With any subject there will always be different ways of shooting it, but with aircraft that are moving – be they jets, helicopters or older propeller aircraft in the air, taking off or landing – the common denominator is shutter speed,
which is why I recommend shooting in TV mode (shutter priority) so you can change settings quickly. I also put the ISO mode into auto and use exposure compensation to dial in the correct exposure. With regard to metering mode, I know some who like to use spot metering for aircraft in the sky, but I have found this to be a hit-and-miss method, so I prefer to use either centreweighted or more typically evaluative metering.
With aircraft in the sky the metering will typically make the aircraft very dark as it is trying to expose for the sky, so you will just need to increase the exposure compensation to compensate for this. Check the LCD or, better still, use your histogram. On all counts though, a slightly underexposed image will be better than an overexposed image as with postprocessing you will be able to rescue the image, but an overexposed image with clipped highlights will be beyond repair.
Shutter speeds
There will be a difference in the shutter speeds when taking a photo of a fast-displaying jet and an old propeller aircraft or helicopter. For a fast jets display, I would recommend a shutter speed of around 1/1250sec, to freeze the action as the planes turn or come by, especially if they have some moisture (fluff) coming off the wings. Whereas with old aircraft and helicopters you will need to be down towards 1/125sec or even lower if you can; 1/80sec is ideal but it will take some practice to get a sharp image. These slower shutter speeds are also ideal for takeoff and landing shots as they help to capture the natural feel of movement and blur out the background.