Red Bull Air Race

[suryad]

Hey fellas,
I am a noob at least in terms of the experience you guys have and the knowledge you guys ooze out at this forum :thumbup: ...I was gonna go down to the San Fran Bay and try to get some shots of the planes...more details @ www.redbullairrace.com and my gear is as follows:

Canon EOS 20D
17-85 mm lens
2 gig mem card
Tripod

So now I know the lens is rather pathetic, but being a student and all, I really have no means to get the 70-200 mm f2.8 IS USM lens from Canon (which is next on my buying list anyways)...my question to you all is...how do you think I would be able to maximize the quality of photographs I would take of the planes performing high speed stunts?

I realize that cloud cover and direct sunlight will definitely change some settings on the camera like WB and ISO. Do you think it would be wise to use the manual mode and fire off a few shots first? Keep that aperture open as wide as possible, use 400-800 ISO and high shutter speed? Would that be a good setting to start off at?

And also, would it be more convenient to use Manual focus or Auto focus at that time? Because the focusing system will depend on how fast the lens is, and this is not a fast lens, hence the dilemma.

Hope my questions have made sense. THanks a lot for your time.

 

[Ghoste]

I just saw the commericial for this, looks so awesome!

First off your going to need a fast shutter the closer you are. But since you aren't zooming in that much that's not huge. If you want to make you are good on shutter speed set the camera to shutter priority, and set your shutter, it'll pick the f/stop for you. Make sure you take the pictures on the BEST quality you can. Since you can't zoom much you might be able to pull in after you get the picture on your computer. One of our many plane fanatics on here will be by shortly to tell you what you should do Have fun, I wish I was going.

 

[Ant]

It's not easy to shoot properly, not easy at all. The natural thing to do with high speed aircraft is to, as advised above, set a high shutter speed. Unfortunately, that's not the right thing to do in this case. These are all propeller aircraft and so a high shutter speed will freeze the propeller, which is not a very pleasing effect.

I also don't think that your lens will be too great either, not enough reach. I'd advise a cheap 70-300 if you can get one. If not then set your shutter speed at 1/200, which should be OK @ 85mm anyway and check your panning technique.

Auto focus will be fine. Stick to ISO100 and take whatever aperture the camera gives you.

 

[suryad]

Thanks for the quick replies guys. I realize that given the lens I have it is not going to be easy at all! But still given that I dont have the lens I require, and the air race is on the 8th of October...I will try my best and take the most advice I can get!