300/2.8 at Warriors Over the Wasatch

I had a very nice Sunday at Hill Air Force Base near Ogden, Utah under clear skies and moderate temperatures. In my previous visit to this air show I brought my 70-200 f/4 for the sake of lightweight convenience but this time I brought the bigger brother, a 300mm f/2.8G VR-II. Oh yes, the arms do get tired but I'm happy I chose it.

Be sure to view these at original size.


P-51 flown by Mark Peterson. This beauty was the big draw for me.

300mm worked out to be pretty good that day. The P-51 shot is not cropped. I was using a 1.4X TC for a while but it was too close, too often.

Not the usual backdrop for an air show photo:


T-33 flown by Gregory Colyer

Hill AFB is home to the 388th Fighter Wing which flies these F-35A's. They were very challenging to get a good pan on.







Shockwave drew the crowd right up to the fence. It has 3 more jet engines than are normally found on trucks. It's well named; when the fire lit up it felt like my ear drums were going to touch each other.




A very close pass

The Yak-110 (two Yak-55's plus a jet engine transmogrified together into one heck of an agile airplane) was pretty special. It could hover straight up for a crazy long time under jet power.


Yak-110 flown by Jeff Boerboon





And of course the Thunderbirds flew... but not before this crew member took advantage of a photo op of local law enforcement officers with their Harleys and Beemers.



Cleared for takeoff... stitch of 6 handheld frames.



Thanks for looking,

Tony

--
Render unto Digital, that which is Digital's,
and unto Analog, that which is Analog's

Tony, These are just breathtaking! The sharp crispness and bokeh of that lens, puts these images into different league altogether. The beautiful backgrounds ( like that image of the hills behind the plane ) makes it feel like I'm really there. Well done.

The only criticism I might have is the use of a very high shutter speed with the prop planes - makes them look like they're stalling. But perhaps it's that super fast shutter speed that's the main contributor to the sharp crispness of these great captures!!!!!!

these are fantastic... gotta be weird flying that double plane so far off center

Thank you for the kind comments! I was super pleased with what that lens can do, after frankly having had troubles in some occasions in the past whenever I was holding on far too strongly to "absolutes" such as ETTR, perfectly optimal aperture setting, etc.

I'm 100% with you about wanting to achieve prop blur, and you are of course spot on that there can be a price to pay in terms of tracking stability. My success ratio at the various settings I was using confirms that. That's entirely on me - I don't get chances to attend air shows very often and high-rate panning is a skill that needs to be developed. There were also times during the rapid sequencing of acts that I forgot to switch my paradigm.

In fact I was even thinking it could have been useful to have dropped in an ND filter for the prop planes.

I went through another file folder last night and I'll add at least one example of "sharp enough" + with some prop blur that I was able to pull off.

--

A couple of added notes... I would like to express my extreme gratitude to the base personnel of Hill AFB. They were the very height of professional demeanor and polite interaction. Also the Utah Transit Authority in my experience ran an efficient shuttle bus system that greatly helped in the moving of a third of a million visitors onto and off of the base.

Bravo!


Render unto Digital, that which is Digital's,
and unto Analog, that which is Analog's

Tony, These too, are beautiful! I can't help but think that ISO 64 may be part of the "secret sauce". I think if these were shot at ISO 400 or higher, the digital noise would cripple the ultra-smooth velvety feel.

When I view these on my 10 yr old 21 inch monitor, I almost feel like I'm "louping" Kodachromes on a light table. They are very film-like. Perhaps it's the use of a very sharp lens, coupled with a digital sensor without the high pass filter, that delivers images that need little or no sharpening? And I think it's the sharpening process in post processing, that imparts artifacts that scream out to the observer "This is a Digital Capture"! As a side note, I'd love to see these images on a 32 inch 4K monitor!

Barlowephoto said:

Tony, These too, are beautiful! I can't help but think that ISO 64 may be part of the "secret sauce". I think if these were shot at ISO 400 or higher, the digital noise would cripple the ultra-smooth velvety feel.

Click to expand...

Thanks again for the compliments.

Low ISO, Sony hi-res sensors, the adjustments in LightRoom, and lenses that preserve a lot of subject detail at all levels are a few of my favorite things. I've also come to appreciate the wisdom of using the LR controls in the order they are presented.

Some basics in my post processing are that I never sharpen the sky; I use the Masking control in the sharpening tool to exclude every relatively "empty" area from the sharpening process. And I'll use a bit of luminance noise reduction.