3rd excursion: POF Airshow with the new P/L 100-400 lens (7 images)

Hello Again!

Just finished a week in Southern CA where I took in a couple of days of wildlife shooting at the LAC Arboretum and then had an amazing weekend in Chino, CA at the Planes of Fame 2016 Airshow. Absolutely the best Airshow (especially for Warbirds) that I know of on this continent! Just a brilliant experience.

This year POF honored the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Some of the aircraft highlights included five (5!) flying P-40 Warhawks (on Sat; 3 P-40s with the F-16 in a ‘Heritage Flight’ :), two Zeros (1 of which is fully original), on Friday a collection of early aircraft from the ‘Golden Age’ of Flight & Sunday a flying display from the Northrop N9MB ’Flying Wing!’ and so much more - really too much to mention here!

I was pleased to work with my new P/L 100-400 lens at the Airshow. I believe it did an excellent job. Of course with the way that they fly the ‘racetrack’ displays at Chino, the P/L lens was a bit longer than I needed for much of the weekend. Nice to have the range, though!

I shot most of the show with the new lens on my GX8 and a few on Friday with the GH4. There were some issues - mostly user error (the off-center EVF on the GX8 makes it a bit more challenging *for me* when tracking a speeding plane) or camera tracking limitations. The AFC/DFD is much improved (I used it for the majority of the flying shots). Honestly, I did not get near the success rate that I would have with my Canon rig which sports a very good Predictive Auto Focus & an OFV. As I had mentioned earlier, however, I believe the new telephoto lens is quite excellent and, as of now, is many steps ahead of the cameras in our system. I do expect the M43rds cameras to keep getting better though. I am very pleased with the Panasonic upgrades and look forward to their next iteration!

I have a few thousand pictures to sort & tweak, but I thought some of you might be interested in the 1st batch of photos from Sunday, May 1st (as I work backwards). Sunday’s sky was the clearest with bright blue & contrasty light. Saturday, grey & cloudy. I have uploaded several of Sunday’s images to my SmugMug Gallery here:

http://www.vgbphotos.com/NEW-TRIAL-of-Panasonic-Leica-D

http://www.vgbphotos.com/NEW-TRIAL-of-Panasonic-Leica-D/3rd-Time-out-with-the-Panasoni/

BTW - for image view options in SmugMug:

Click on the image you’d like to view - it should expand to fill screen. In the lower right corner there are icons: the stacking boxes icon allows you to choose a different viewing size when clicked & the ‘i’ in a circle (i), when clicked, gives you photo info/exif data.

Cheers!

LH

VGBphotos.com

Here are a few samples from the Gallery:

Hawker Sea Fury T MK.20

Grumman F6F Hellcat - CAF

Vought F4U-1A Corsair

Supermarine Spitfire Mk IX - Texas Flying Legends

B-25J Mitchell "Betty's Dream"

Northrop N9MB Flying Wing

T-33, F-86F & MiG-15