I went to the Miramar Air Show mostly because they had the F-35, and I thought it might do a bit more than it had at other shows due to it being the show closer rather than the Blue Angels. It did, but not really a full demo, although it was close. Nice tight turns, high performance take-off, things like that. I always complain about the lighting of this show, being backlit, but with the F-35 flying last, it had some of the best light.

These are probably the best two shots I got from the show:

The vapor over the intakes and wings looks interesting, and I wonder if that is the result of some kind of careful aerodynamic designing, or just the byproduct of other aerodynamic requirements.


And I finally got lucky and nailed the timing of one of these passes

damn these are both great shots! The F-35 isn't a full demo yet is it? A friend who's pretty tight with the ACC demo pilots hinted about a F-35 and A-10 demo coming next year, already saw the A-10 confirmed on their FB page. But he was saying the F-35 demo won't have the G's that all the other demo's have for some reason...

I can never get these damn crossing shots, glad you nailed it!

Thanks Dave! Yeah, I got real lucky with that one. I missed three attempts prior, and was bummed because I got the timing pretty good on a Patriots cross-over, but was zoomed in too much - the noses were cut off.

I think the F-35 is about 2/3rds of the way to a full demo. This one definitely had more performance moves than the last I saw.

Love the shot of the F-35!

Any other good shots from the show? We were there, but I've never been good a getting photos...

Hi malibu43, all the shots I thought were worth processing are here:

http://www.techflyer.net/images/mm17/album/

Ken, that Herc with the full disk blur is fantastic!

Thanks Dave! I recently noticed that the air shows I go to at a given location are pretty much the same year after year, so my shots from one year look a lot like they did from the previous year. That's one reason I have gone to fewer air shows lately. This show is so close, and had the F-35, which I haven't photographed much, that I decided to go, and took the opportunity to try a few different things.

In the past, I've been so focused (no pun intended) on making sure I got a clear shot that I didn't try lower shutter speeds much. Now that I have a ton of photos from previous shows, I decided to experiment more, and used a lower shutter speed for a lot of shots. I didn't get a lot of keepers, but that was one of them.