R7 at the Edwards Air Force Base airshow

Karl_Guttag wrote:

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.

They're all reduced in size, I always tend to reduce the size of shots I post in forums just to make it easier to upload.  There is some cropping on them, especially the smaller prop-planes, but not much at all and most are at or over 6000 on the long edge in full size

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.

Just a luck of the draw with position and time of year.  When I was at NAF El Centro early this year it was perfect, sun was at my back all day long!

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.

Yeah, I noticed the aperture creeping way up, especially on Sunday with all the extra sun.  For props, and ND filter wouldn't be a back way to go to help dial that back!

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 didn't have an issue with the buffer on the R7.  I shot in CRAW and at 15FPS in mechanical and e-shutter, with that I found with a nice V90 SD card I could get a good 5-6 seconds of straight shooting without hitting the buffer, and I never hold for that long in a single string.

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.

My panning kind of sucks, so I tend to err on the side of slightly higher shutter speeds to help offset it!

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).

On the R7 rolling shutter is a much bigger, and much more visible issue, compared to the R5.  The R5 can shoot props, and if you look close you can see a bit of skewing, but with the R7 it's way too apparent.  Same with opposing passes, one place will be good they other will look all stretched out.  EFCS mitigates that.  I could shoot full mechanical, but EFCS has just always been my preference.

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

The weight made it a very easy show to deal with all day.  However, I miss having a grip.  My hands are a bit too big and my pink has to sit under the camera, which isn't horrible, but after a while it's also not the most comfortable thing.

What I really liked on the R7 was that I could shoot a full battery and not worry about the FPS dropping in mechanical/EFCS mode.  Also, having the fake shutter sound really helps remind you how long you're holding the button down with the electronic shutter.

The other obvious benefit is the field of view of the R7 and the 100-500.  As long as the planes were off the ground I could get nice shots at the full 500mm and not worry about heat mirages.  The haze from the sun, well, it is what it is so you do your best to pick a good spot in the morning to shoot from!

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.

Exactly, the prop plane shots always take a long time to weed through, with jet you can pretty much just pick the one(s) you like and be done with it!