Hi All,
I've been a big fan of reading the posts here and checking out all the absolutely incredible pictures that you post. I've been a HUGE airshow and photography fan since my days in high school and finally was able to get a decent (for an amateur anyway) zoom lense for my SLR (I have a Canon Digital Rebel XT with a 55-250mm IS lens). These are some of the shots I was able to get, ANY tips or good practices would be much appreciated. I don't get to see many airshows since they closed the nearest airbase to us (Willow Grove NAS) but I try to travel to see what I can.
On to the airshow, not a bad day for a show, some clouds made it a little tough and we were shooting into the sun most of the day but I think they turned out all right (I need to invest in a polarizer). I hope you enjoy!

Avenger


HellDiver



Dauntless


Corsair




Spitfire




Mustangs



Thunderbolt



B25



B17



Had a little hard time with the prop blur on the 17s and P47, guess it will come in time.

Damn, when you said Reading, I was thinking in the UK

I'm not good enough to comment on the photos themselves, but if you don't disdain PSing a little, I guess a little histogram adjustment will bring out the colours a bit more. I'm still waiting for a good airshow so I can try out my '300 on something a bit more substantial than a seagull.

Lovely pictures. The polished metal finish on the Mitchell and '17 looks great.

whoops, guess I should have specified Reading, PA, USA
Thanks Gopher, I certainly don't mind a little PS...I'll toy around with it.

Cheers!

Beautiful pictures. Thank you for sharing them.

I'm far from a photography guru but I know what I like and I like those! Nice work & thanks for posting.

I can't recall when I last saw a pic of a HellDiver in flight, good stuff.

And that tail shot of the Spit is pure gold.

Wow. That is a terrific selection of Warbirds. I too thought you meant Europe because I have rarely seen Avengers and Helldivers flying around here in the US. -Midwest to be specific.

Advise that I can give...now that could be hard. Like anything else the better equipment you have the better you can capture your vision. Before I had a decent telephoto lens I resided myself to ground shots. Overall I think you did a pretty good job! My editing software said the picture I worked with was taken at ISO 100, 1/125, F/14, 235mm. For the airshows I try to remember the 'Sunny 16' rule and work from there. Your shots tend to be a bit on the over-exposed side. Change that F/14 to F/16 (under these photos conditions) and you might be spot on.

So I took the largest photo you posted and I just took 5 minutes to edit it. I adjusted the exposure by -1.33, I recovered some details, added some clarity, sharpened the entire photo, gave more saturation to the yellows and blues, added a graduated filter for the sky, and finally did some tone curve changes. Overall it wasn't anything major. The biggest adjustment was the correcting the exposure, but when I did that it darkened some of the other details hence the additional editing. While this is far from perfect, perhaps still a bit on the light side, it really shows what a great photo you took and what a few minutes of editing can do.

Great pics, Big Dog! And like 20mm said, I've never seen a Helldiver in flight - amazing.

Nice editing job, Counterman.

Thanks guys, according to the pamphlet we got at the airshow this is the only flying Helldiver left out of the 7200 built, the West Texas Wing of the CAF flies it.

After you mentioned something about overexposure I noticed it. I was shooting TV mode on my camera so I was only adjusting the shutter speed, but that touch-up looks awesome. Thanks!

Usually they put on a good show, Reading is about 1.5 hours outside of Philadelphia. This year was all WWII planes, I was hoping to see my first F22 but I guess I'll have to wait.

Thanks for all the advice guys!

Terrific pictures, Bigdog, and what a great show that must have been. Some rare birds were out that day?
Counterman, my wife loves taking photos and would like to know what program you used to edit that Spitfire shot. Thanks.

Pooch,

It was made purely in Adobe Lightroom 2. I installed the software this weekend and I have been doing several edits over the last 48 hours. For me, using Lightroom 2 has actually made me cringe at some of my previous edits.

You can check out my 'testing' set at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26871905@N06/sets/72157619260570857/

When I started in photography I played around with Tv, Av, A-Dep, and while they have there place, I found it holds you back while doing ground to air photography. Go over to a local airport that has moderate traffic, park your car near the end of the landing end of a runway, and practice shooting in Manual. -It's NOT hard.

Tips:

-Pay attention to your light meter when looking through the view finder and adjust accordingly.

-Use shutter speeds like 1/200, 1/160, and slower when photographing prop driven aircraft. This is because you want some prop blur. A frozen prop is a quick way to ruin a nice photo.

-Use shutter speeds like 1/800, 1/1000, and faster when shooting jets, due to their speed you need to up the speed.

-Shoot in AI-Servo and Continuous.

-Don't use Auto-Focal points. Control your focal point manually. Most of the time I use the center focal point.

-Once again concerning shutter speeds: Lets say you are shooting at 400mm. If you DON'T have Image Stabilizing, do not shoot slower then 1/400, you can try 1/320 if you have a steady hand. If you DO have IS, you can lower the shutter speed to around 1/200 and if you have a steady hand 1/160. ...this is all to prevent camera shake which results in blurry photos. Again though, experiment with this, but while starting out I found this to be a good rule.

-As I mentioned earlier, remember the 'Sunny 16' rule. Typically on a nice sunny day you shoot at f/16 or something close. Play with this a bit. If you are shooting a P51 at 1/200, you'll have to adjust the aperture accordingly.

-Finally.. Have FUN!

You can look at my photos on my Flickr page. I started in photography like 17 months ago. I think I do a pretty good job with what I do and I am always learning. To see how I have progressed is interesting and fun to look at. -I have some really crappy photos on there that I thought were great at the time, but, really, they suck.

Hope this helps and is a bit educational. -Shooting on Manual is cake. Once you learn it you'll never go back to anything else.

::You can get to my flickr page from the post above::