R7 at the Edwards Air Force Base airshow

Thanks for sharing some great pictures. I'm getting ready for a couple of airshows in Houston and Dallas, so I have some "technical" questions.

First, are the pictures you posted "cropped" or "reduced" as they are much smaller than the R7's resolution?  My guess, looking at the focal length, framing, and clarity of the shots (you said there was haze), is that they are mostly reduced.

JayLT4 wrote:

I had the opportunity to spend the weekend out at Edwards Air Force base for their Aerospace Valley Airshow over the weekend. I took both the R7 and the R5, but planned on using the R7 for most of the flight shots and the R5 for most of the statics and taxi shots.

I use a similar strategy but with the RP with a wider lens (the RF24-240)  for "static" shots and the R5 with the RF100-500 for flying shots.

The R7 had the RF 100-500 and the R5 had either the 14-35 or the 24-105.

The lighting was pretty rough at times as the sun was in front and to the right but moved off a bit towards the afternoon. However, the clouds on Saturday made up for the issues with the sun. Some near-perfect skies in my opinion. Sunday, on the other hand, was completely void of clouds which made things a bit more difficult as it was a bit hazy from the bright sun. But you work with what you have.

Yes, it seems like airshows deliberately have you shooting into the sun😊.  I primarily prefer to shoot WW2 planes, so I want the sun to illuminate the front of the prop to see the prop and its yellow tips better. But as you say, you must work with what they give you.

Overall it was a great show. Was able to see a lot of things I had never seen in the air before, and the NASA jets rounded things out quite well.

I shot mainly on shutter-priority, with a mixture of electronic shutter for jets (and no opposing passes) and EFCS for props (and opposing passes). Multiple buttons set for different focus options helped get a decent composition with varying situations and overall the R7 did a very good job, especially considering the conditions.

I've been shooting with M mode with Auto-ISO, but am thinking about switching to Tv with ISO fixed to 100. And then using an ND filter when shooting prop planes to keep the f-number from getting too high.

I came close to getting the R7 for the extra crop factor but decided to stick with the R5 due to the buffer size and frame rate and less rolling shutter in electronic shutter mode. I like back-button focus with tracking (Vehicle or None) for airshows so I can concentrate on zoom and framing and not keeping a focus target on the plane.

I almost exclusively use electronic shutter for prop planes, but then I typically shoot at 1/60th to 1/125th, so the prop is more of a blur that avoids a warped prop due to the rolling shutter. I'm firing off long bursts of shots to get a few pics where the plane is acceptably sharp with a good amount of the prop disk. I use a 2-stop ND filter when shooting props on a sunny day to keep the f-number in the f11 range.

I'm curious why you decided to use EFCS for the prop planes.  Is it to prevent the warping of the prop or for some other reason?  I assume it is the same reason for planes opposing each other (I will try this at the next airshow where the Blue Angles will be flying).

I'm also curious how you have found the handling of the R7 vs. R5 for airshow photography.

Still have tons of shots to sort through as I've barely looked at Sunday and any of the static display shots just yet.

I feel for you. I took about 10,000 pictures daily for two days each in the last two airshows. Shooting at low shutter speeds while panning with planes (with a "hit" rate of 1 in 10 to 1 in 20), I have many shots to weed out.