Photos from Shuttleworth Season-Premiere Airshow

This airshow was on Sunday 6th May.

Shuttleworth Collection website

Shuttleworth Collection at Wikipedia

I'll soon post here about 10 photos of aircraft taken at the airshow. (I won't show photos of the visiting jet). Here was the running order:

I thought this scene was interesting, even though it is not an aircraft in flight:

This is my favourite photo from this airshow:

The next post in this thread will show about 10 photos of aircraft in flight.

Later I'll post photos of some of the ground vehicles of the Collection.

And I'll add some notes about technical matters such as camera settings and software used.

I took about 2000 images of aircraft in flight. I'm struggling to reduce these to a manageable number.

I chose the ones below because they mainly show the tops of the aircraft and/or the pilot.

They are roughly in the running order identified in the original post of this thread.

Hi Barry:

Nice to have you back.  Thanks for sharing your collection of excellent K1 photos; you are showing that the K1 can be used for sports.

Dale

Barry Pearson wrote:

I took about 2000 images of aircraft in flight. I'm struggling to reduce these to a manageable number.

I chose the ones below because they mainly show the tops of the aircraft and/or the pilot.

They are roughly in the running order identified in the original post of this thread.

I used my K-1 with its battery grip. I used it hand-held all day.

(I also carry a Panasonic Lumix LX100 as a sort of "digital notepad". The running order  blackboard shown in the original post was taken with that camera).

For photos of the vehicles of the Shuttle Collection, I used the D FA* 24-70 f/2.8. (I'll post some of those photos in a day or two).

For photos of aircraft in flight, I used the D FA 150-450, which has been my normal "things in flight" lens for years.

DNG. (I mainly use Sandisk Extreme Pro, either 32Gb or 64Gb).

TAv. I care a lot about the shutter speed and aperture, but I hardly care at all about the ISO.

AF-C Spot. My K-1 is nearly always set to use just the centre AF-point.

"High-speed" (hm!) burst mode, typically used for about 4 shots at a time for aircraft in flight. (I don't used crop-mode, which would increase the burst rate).

All DNGs are imported into Lightroom CC. (I try to reject and delete most of them!)

All photos being posted in this thread have been processed in Photoshop CC. (The main reason was to mitigate panning issues at the slow shutter speeds used to get propeller-blur. I'll post more about this).

(I've probably omitted something important here!)

In order to achieve propeller-blur, I try to use a shutter speed of 1/320 or less for such aircraft. That means I have to pan accurately.

(For gliders and jets I use much higher shutter speeds. For helicopters, somewhat slower).

This airshow was a bad day for panning! From when I arrived at 09:00, I was on my feet nearly all the time. It was hot with hardly any wind.

The air display started at 14:00. By the time the most interesting aircraft appeared hours later, I had been on my feet and active for more than 7 hours, and taken about 2000 images, hand-holding a heavy camera and lens.

I'm a weedy 71-year-old! By that time, I was mentally and physically zapped. My panning had gone down the pan!

(I'm ketogenic and metabolically flexible, so I didn't need to snack to keep up my energy. But I may have been a bit dehydrated).

The main reason for deleting photos since the airshow has been bad panning. Even some of the better photos were not up my past standard.

Therefore, for all photos of aircraft in flight in this thread, I've used Photoshop's Filter > Sharpen > Shake Reduction. It isn't magic, and sometimes it goes a bit weird, but it has probably doubled my "sharp enough to publish" rate.

It has sometimes even managed to squeeze out a tiny improvement in photos which I would have been happy with.

(I'm still learning how to fine-tune it, and how it relates to IBIS, etc. Also, I need to experiment with combinations of Lightroom's sharpening and this Photoshop feature).

Wonderful photos, very nice details and color. It is a treat to see all of this. 
Thanks for all the details of how you photographed them, very good learning for me. Interesting that you mention you are not worried about ISO, nor the weight of k1+f2.8 lens, .. yes they all look great !!

I've tweeted these photos to the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF), the Shuttleworth Collection, and Lisa Harding who is a keen photographer and artist of the BBMF:

https://twitter.com/RAFBBMF

https://twitter.com/Shuttleworth_OW

https://twitter.com/SketchLisa

It is only fair that I show them here too!

My Twitter account is: https://twitter.com/BarryCPearson

Top stuff Barry!

(This will probably be the last set of photos I post to this thread. I have two more "aircraft in flight" events this weekend, 19th and 20th May, and I expect to start a new thread or two for those).

The Shuttleworth Collection isn't just about aircraft. It is also about cars, bikes, buses, military vehicles, agricultural equipment, etc. Like the aircraft, they are lovingly preserved and mostly in good working order. And ridden or driven by enthusiasts!

Here are just a few of them. These photos has no photographic merit. The vehicles at this time were on a path among the spectators, and extracting them in Photoshop would have been more trouble than it was worth.

I love events at the Shuttleworth Collection! I'll be there several more times this year.

So the motion blur sharpening is pretty ridiculous... Thank you very much for the reminder!

Nice series Barry.........what shocked me more than anything is the great weather you had............

.........in England?

DAVID MANZE wrote:

Nice series Barry.........what shocked me more than anything is the great weather you had............

.........in England?

I got sun-burned on the back of my right hand! It's currently peeling.

(I normally take care because I burn easily, but that is a region I forgot).

I have 2 events booked for this weekend: an evening shoot on Saturday and a Air-to-Air shoot on Sunday. The weather report is good for both days.

-- hide signature --

Dave's clichés

Lots to like here. Thanks for the great images and the good information.  I'll visit the Shuttleworth collection when they have similiar events in the future.

Brent

rmalbers wrote:

FWIW: I was at an airplane museum this winter and there were several planes that were yellow in color, I found out they paint the planes that they used to train pilots in yellow.

Yes, that is common. If I see yellow, I typically think "pilot training".

It isn't universal. I'm not sure why. Perhaps when training beyond basic level they use colours that are more relevant to the extra experience being gained?