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Autofocus Issue

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foto-mistrz said:
I wish it hadn't have been overcast that day. I see that they flew
the stealth planes. They just left the F117 in the hangar.
Click to expand...
You got a nice shot of the F-117. Unfortunately the F-117 and B-2 only did fly-bys at this show. And it was overcast as well making for some difficult shots. The Thunderbirds couldn't do some of their big patterns due to a low ceiling.

Darren
--
http://www.pbase.com/dfazio
 
dfazio said:
This was probably my favorite picture of the day. It shows the
massive bombing capability of the B-52 in action with the
Thunderbirds in the foreground. Picture 031300U1 shows the results
of the 30 mm Gatling gun from an A-10.
Click to expand...
Thank goodness for that, I thought a plane had dropped out of the sky. They seem to have a tendency to do that at air shows.

--
Fuji S602Z and 2800Z
http://www.peekaboo.me.uk - general portfolio
http://www.boo-photos.co.uk - live music photos
 
Just shots.... I use to supervise the weekend duty crew at Eglin, it sure was nice to be able to take pictures of the aircraft before people got there. Take care.
Austin
dfazio said:
I noticed while doing some shooting this weekend that my 602 was
having a time trying to autofocus on an F-16 moving at 1000 mph :)

Here's the results of a (rather difficult) shoot of the air show at
Barksdale AFB.

http://www.pbase.com/dfazio/airshow

Darren
--
http://www.pbase.com/dfazio
Click to expand...
 
William Wilgus said:
Which photo is the F-16 at "1,000 mph"?
Click to expand...
All of the photos on pages 5 & 6 are of the Thunderbirds (F-16). I'm actually not real sure of their actual speed at the show. They have a maximum potential of 1500 mph, but I'm sure they were doing closer to half of that .

I do know they were going fast enough to make tracking/focusing a difficult task!

btw...This is the 50th anniversary of the Thunderbirds.

Darren
--
http://www.pbase.com/dfazio
 
dfazio said:
I noticed while doing some shooting this weekend that my 602 was
having a time trying to autofocus on an F-16 moving at 1000 mph :)

Here's the results of a (rather difficult) shoot of the air show at
Barksdale AFB.

http://www.pbase.com/dfazio/airshow

Darren
--
http://www.pbase.com/dfazio
Click to expand...
I used this technique to get my pics. I would put the plane in my sights about a half mile out and I would pan with the plane until it was around a quarter mile away and then depress the shutter to focus and hold it until the plane was approaching its closest point to me and then fully depress the shutter using the 5 frame burst mode. If lucky I would have one or two good keepable shots and I would immediately put the shots in the trash that I didn't want in order to save precious disc space(340MB Microdrive was all I had taking 6MP Fine pics only allows approx 145 pictures)
 
foto-mistrz said:
I used this technique to get my pics. I would put the plane in my
sights about a half mile out and I would pan with the plane until
it was around a quarter mile away and then depress the shutter to
focus and hold it until the plane was approaching its closest point
to me and then fully depress the shutter using the 5 frame burst
mode. If lucky I would have one or two good keepable shots and I
would immediately put the shots in the trash that I didn't want in
order to save precious disc space(340MB Microdrive was all I had
taking 6MP Fine pics only allows approx 145 pictures)
Click to expand...
That is basically the same technique I wound up using and it worked pretty good. Fortunately I had over a Gig of available space so I didn't have to worry about reviewing/deleting pics in the field.

Darren
--
http://www.pbase.com/dfazio
 
dfazio said:
All of the photos on pages 5 & 6 are of the Thunderbirds (F-16).
I'm actually not real sure of their actual speed at the show. They
have a maximum potential of 1500 mph, but I'm sure they were doing
closer to half of that .
Click to expand...
I'm sure that they were tough to take, and you done REAL Good!

If it bursts a buble for you, I apologize, but I'm sure they were all at less than the speed of sound, which is 746 mph at sea level (and decreases with altitude). Aircraft are normally prohibited from supersonic flight over the U.S. because the sonic boom can cause considerable damage. I'd guess that during the show their speed varies from about 200 mph to 600 mph---depending on the routine they're performing at the time.

BTW, I plan on going to the airshow at NAS Jacksonville, FL this fall. I hope I can do as well taking picutres of the Blue Angels as you did with the Thunderbirds!

Yours,

William
 
Just a thought, you might try pre-focusing on something in MF, in this case the far runway-edge, then leaving it alone.

P.S. They -wish- they were going 1000mph.
dfazio said:
kmjk said:
Great action shots. Did you try panning?
kmjk
Click to expand...
Thanks. I did use panning on some of the flight shots. But for
most of them I tried to anticipate where the planes would be and
used 5 shot burst mode.

Darren
--
http://www.pbase.com/dfazio
Click to expand...
 
sg10 said:
Just a thought, you might try pre-focusing on something in MF, in
this case the far runway-edge, then leaving it alone.
Click to expand...
I tried pre-focussing at several different distances. However, the distance to the planes varied with each shot. Plus I was shooting in Shutter Priority mode to get 1/1000 sec which put me around f/3.6 (low DOF).

The best technique I found was to track the plane in MF and use the one-touch AF button. I would then quickly move the frame to just in front of the plane and shoot in 5 shot burst mode.

Darren
--
http://www.pbase.com/dfazio
 
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