The recession finally hit home with this avid air show photographer, when the Blue Angels had to cancel their current season. Â Photographing air shows is one of my favorite hobbies! Â Curse you, politics… Â :-P
Okay, political issues aside, here’s today’s photo…
The Photo
(Click here for a larger image!)
The Equipment and Settings
- Nikon D70
- Nikon 80-400mm AF-D VR @ 260mm (The old one, not the new AFS-G VR one!)
- 1/100 sec @ f/13 & ISO 200, hand-held
- Shutter Priority, cloudy WB, RAW
The Shooting Conditions
Shooting air shows is the best situation (actually, the only) I shoot in for demonstrating the use of shutter priority mode. Â People often think that shutter priority is what you use to shoot fast action because you want to dictate a very fast shutter speed, when in fact most action sports photographers get the same result by simply shooting in aperture priority with their aperture wide open. Â This will always ensure that you get the absolute best shutter speed possible without ruining your exposure. Â (Or, you could just shoot manual exposure if the lighting is even enough for an indoor sports event, however outdoors for air shows that is just never the case!)
The reason I shoot in shutter priority is actually counter-intuitive: Â I don’t just want 100% sharpness, I actually want a specific balance between blur and sharpness. Â The best example of this is a panning shot. Â When you try and get motion blur by panning your camera, you are always trying to cut it as close as possible with your shutter speed. Â For example photographing an aircraft at 260mm, I know I can’t go any lower than about 1/100 sec before the entire image starts getting blurry, not just the background.
As another example, let’s switch from jets to propeller planes and helicopters. Â This first image was made at 1/90 sec and 150mm.
I wish I could shoot at a slower shutter speed to get a little more blur out of the rotors, but helicopter rotor blades don’t actually spin that fast, at least not on these larger cargo helicopters. Â Helicopter main rotor blades are usually around just a few hundred RPM. An airplane propeller, by comparison, spins far faster and so this second image (of the Blue Angels’ “Fat Albert”) was made at 1/350 sec and yet blur is still achieved…
In case you’re wondering, the whole point of getting these blades / propellers etc. to blur is to avoid what some photographers call “the falling helicopter” look. Â Just imagine if the blades / rotors were absolutely perfectly sharp, if for whatever reason I had shot at 1/8000 sec or something. Â The helicopter would look like it was frozen in mid-air, and if you stare at such an image for long enough you start to trip out about how it could just be suspended there in mid-air. Â Thus, a little bit of blur helps to indicate motion (and therefore, flight) to the image viewer.
The Post-Production
All of these images were made many years ago, on a D70, in JPG. (So as to maximize the puny buffer on that camera!) Â All-post-production was therefore limited to simple exposure, contrast, and saturation adjustments.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this little tidbit on using shutter priority (and shutter speed in general) to control certain amounts of motion blur! Â And, here’s to hoping that the Blue Angels return for next season!
Take care,
=Matthew Saville=
About The “Photo of the Day” Series
If you’ll notice, the SLR Lounge “Photo of the Day” articles are posted in the Photography / Shooting section of our website, not the Inspiration section. Â This is on purpose, because these images are simply meant to be a daily dose of “here’s how we shot a random cool photo!” Â …and not so much as “wow here’s the most incredible photo we’ve seen in 24 hours, it will blow your mind!” Â We wanted to escape from the typical inspirational photo type posts a little bit, because they are often lacking in helpful background information about the equipment used, camera settings, and details of the shooting conditions or the photographer’s thoughts. Â Hopefully you find these posts to be helpful insights into how you might approach a certain situation or style of shooting!
Matthew Saville
Follow his wilderness nightscape adventures on Instagram: instagram.com/astrolandscapes
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