Airshow (pic heavy)

[40737011]

I am quite proud of these as I am not used to photographing things that move fast. All the pics are uncropped and taken at extreme zoom. It was very overcast which is unusual for this neck of the woods.
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Comments always welcome.

 

[tirediron]

Neat.

 

[A/Ox4]

Were you on a zoom lense? I think you could get better results by zooming out and cropping later. A few of these are not framed properly, which can be difficult with fast moving objects.

 

[40737011]

Were you on a zoom lense? I think you could get better results by zooming out and cropping later. A few of these are not framed properly, which can be difficult with fast moving objects.

FUJI HS20 Bridge camera.
The point of the exercise for me was to get useable quality pics of moving subjects and not have to crop much or at all. All of these were hand held and it was the first time I really challenged myself on subject matter of this nature and I am quite pleased with the results.
What would you change with the framing? and yes it is really hard to follow a subject moving as fast as a guy on a parachute.

 

[A/Ox4]

The first one is nearly out od frame, which looks bad to me. Number 6 is also pushing the border too.

Practice is always good.

 

[robbins.photo]

Nice set. If I had a recommendation believe it or not it would be decrease your shutter speed a bit when shooting prop driven aircraft. I know that might sound a bit strange, so I hope you won't mind if I attempt to illustrate:

20140705 993 by robbins.photo, on Flickr

This was shot at 1/200 - by using a slower shutter speed you get a little more blur out of the props in motion and it gives you a better sense of motion/action. Now this is more of a personal preference thing, some folks like having the prop completely frozen with little to no blur, etc - me I prefer having a bit of motion blur to the prop so it gives you more of that sense of it moving. Otherwise to me at least it just makes it look like the aircraft is sitting on the tarmac or just suspended in the air.

The other caveat here is that you start getting into a bit of a trade off, if the aircraft is moving you want a shutter speed high enough (or of course you can also pan with the aircraft) to get a good sharp image of it while still being slow enough to show the prop as being blurred - so you may have to adjust as the aircraft increases/decreases speed.

But all in all I really like the set.

 

[sm4him]

I really like #4, it's a nice, unusual shot of the jumpers. I think it and maybe a few of the others would be worth doing some additional processing on.

 

[sm4him]

I did a VERY quick edit on #4--curves adjustment on the background and the chutes, a small saturation boost and a slightly bigger contrast boost.
Also cropped it, partly for composition purposes and partly because of the fast and crappy job I did on brightening the background, which was most horribly obvious in the upper part of the smoke. Anyway, just to give you an idea of a possible edit:

 

[40737011]

Nice set. If I had a recommendation believe it or not it would be decrease your shutter speed a bit when shooting prop driven aircraft.

That was exactly what I was trying to do with the first pic. Notice the prop with a bit more drag.

I really like #4, it's a nice, unusual shot of the jumpers. I think it and maybe a few of the others would be worth doing some additional processing on.

What else would you do? huh seems like you already answered that.

 

[40737011]

I did a VERY quick edit on #4--curves adjustment on the background and the chutes, a small saturation boost and a slightly bigger contrast boost.
Also cropped it, partly for composition purposes and partly because of the fast and crappy job I did on brightening the background, which was most horribly obvious in the upper part of the smoke. Anyway, just to give you an idea of a possible edit:
View attachment 93029

Here I tried a more portrait orientation and played with curves and saturation. I left some space at the bottom on purpose to show the direction they were going.
If anyone else wants to do an edit on any of the pics in this set please feel free to do so.