Taking pictures at an airshow?

Question

I have a Minolta Z2, what would be the best setting for taking pictures of fighter jts at an airshow???

Answer 1

To begin you want to set your iso to a relatively fast setting 400-800. The higher the ISo number the more reactive the sensor is to light. However the drawback is that by doing this you will increase the noise, i.e the image will be a little grainy. Regarding the aperture, you want to open it up all the way or at least enough so that your shutter speed is relatively fast. Remember the lower the number the larger the aperture, i.e, more light is allowed into the camera to expose the sensor. An aperture setting of 1.8 or 2.8 should be appropriate. Because more light is reaching the sensor the camera should compensate by increasing the speed of the shutter thus freezing motion. You will notice that if you increase your ISO to a higher number or you open up the aperture more the faster the shutter speed will be. However if your camera by chance doesnt allow you to manipulate the aperture then you should be able to select the shutter speeed. Select a relatively fast shutter speed such as 1/800 or perhaps 1/1000 a second. If the plane is flying low and fast as well as close to you, you will need to select perhaps an even faster shutter speed. The reason for this is that objects moving closer to you appear to move faster than objects that are far away. If you look out a car window and you look at the ground below you it will seem as though the ground is moving faster whereas if you look closer towards the horizon line it will be slower. Hence if the plane is closer select a faster shutter speed.
Your body dynamics will also help you take better shots of the planes. You will need to pan with the subject you are photographing. My suggestion would be to watch how photographers photograph race cars on a track.
One last thing is that you will also need to worry about your cameras light meter. Most likely when you photograph the planes flying overhead you will notice that the plane is really dark. Well that is because your light meter will basically tell the camera that the overall picture is really bright, and that it needs to either make the shutter speed too fast, or the aperture very small, i.e, letting in more light. If your camera has a manual mode you may have to use it and override the auto features. Lighting will be perhaps your key issue and you may have to experiment out there. What you can always do is the day before take photos of birds flying over you in a lighting situation which will be similar to when you will be shooting. Anyhow you may be able to get some better info on this subject if you go to photo.net aand go to the tutorials. best luck

Answer 2

The best? Probably not. I'll be using my Canon D1 Digital this weekend at an airshow.

Answer 3

* lowest iso for least amount of image noise
* biggest file size for best resolution
* scene mode landscape to keep the focus locked
* follow the plane throught the sky to minimize motion blur

Answer 4

I would say , have it on a slow appeature ( i think ) , and follow the plane in the sky, while its taking the photo