Bob Crum

I'm tired of walking. Walked 35 miles at the County Fair... so it seemed. More walking at the Wings Over Camarillo (WOC) air show this past weekend. I'm considering buying a donkey as a service animal!

Tracking fast flying airplanes with a camera is more challenging than capturing a bronc rider tossed off a bucking horse. Besides tracking fast enough to get the plane properly composed, focus is also a huge issue. Learning ballet to replace photography is being considered.

I hereby declare, as usual, that experience and practice are invaluable. More so when shooting fast flying aircraft. Note also that if one practices a lot, one obtains experience. Funny how that works.

For example, last spring at the Los Angeles County air show I had just photographed a jet fighter demo. Thus my shutter speed was set at 1/1000th of a second. Fast shutter speeds help reduce slight blurs that, for me, normally results when tracking fast planes with a heavy telephoto lens. The jet fighter was followed by a prop plane and a jet flying together. It was thrilling to watch two warplanes of vastly different generations. I started shooting. The camera shutter speed was still 1/000th of a second. This is best for the jet but freezes the prop on the other plane. Scientific fact: Prop planes can't fly unless the props are turning. Lesson learned: Best not to get so involved in the event that you forget to properly program the camera.

I applied that lesson to the WOC photo shoot. First, I shot the entire air show in Tv mode. That does not mean I watched the show on a TV. Tv mode is shutter priority mode which means the shutter is adjusted according to circumstances. ISO and aperture left in auto mode. This all means that if I set the shutter speed at 1/60th of a second, the camera's exposure meter will adjust the aperture and the ISO for appropriate exposure.

The air show opened with an F-18 fighter jet. I quickly set shutter speed to 1/1250th of a second. Good grief, I had trouble turning my head fast enough to keep up with that speed demon let alone photography it. See it coming... poof... GONE!

That performance was followed by a jet and prop plane duo. Oh oh! Click... click... shutter speed reset to 125th of a second. Alas I got the prop action perfect and with lens stabilization on and holding the camera steady, tracking blur minimized. BINGO! No gotcha this time!

The process was the same throughout the show... adjusting only the shutter speed according to the plane flying at the time. Hint: The advantage of shooting in Tv mode is that shutter speed can be adjusted very quickly by the thumb-wheel on top of the camera. Aperture is unimportant because depth-of-field is irrelevant.

Photographing such fast moving aircraft makes composition a constant challenge. Some times I anticipated incorrectly and only got an image of the nose of the plane. Other times, I tracked too late and got only the the tail of the plane. I suppose I could put the two parts together in Photoshop, you know, digitally pin the tail on the nose. You wouldn't tell, right?

Photo of the week is my first photo of an F-18 fighter jet with a vapor cone. Conditions were perfect! A vapor cone is a visible cloud of condensed water which usually forms around an aircraft moving at high speed through moist air. Another bucket list shot done! Color me thrilled!

Send comments, suggestions and/or questions to: photography@earthlink.net