Perhaps the easiest of topics to cover considering I'm at the Classic Fighters show, but is it?, catching motion can be tricky because it's a fine line between a blurry image and a image informing the viewer it is actually moving.
So lets start with the planes, Jet Fighters not an issue as you set your lens to Horizontal tracking mode (setting 2 for my L Lens) then set your shutter speed to high and hope that the Jet plane fly's past something which can give you some depth of field and thus present the illusion of speed.
However my primary subjects were World War 2 fighters with nice spinning prop blades, so a little more thought was needed. The trick here is to not capture at such a high shutter speed so that your plane resembles an Airfix model hanging from a kids bedroom ceiling.
So lets take a look at my first shot.
I was lucky that I had the option to get to higher ground which enabled me to capture the hills in the back. Secondly I opted to open the f-stop right up so I could get a fair percentage of the background in reasonable focus and by doing so, adds depth and enough detail for the viewer to relate to foreground and background. Next ISO I cranked up to 800 so I got plenty of light so that I could use a relatively slower shutter speed.
So after watching a few plane passes, and running some manual tests to see what my camera was telling me, it was time so with a steady hand I used single focus point and focused on the target, then panning left as the subject flew by I clicked away.
The prop motion I think is perhaps borderline in terms of rotation pattern but happy with the result and I believe I achieved my objective.
My Next subject was an old Pioneer race between a very old car and 3 guys racing Penny Farthings. I first watched these guys ride around to sort of gauge how quickly they could move. I wished I could have got myself down to a lower point for this as the angle and composition appears to have lost some of it's swagger, however capturing the car in the background, adds to the flavour and generally happy with the shot. Unfortunately I had to crop the photo tight as I caught someones head as I panned left.
My next shot offered a different challenge, firstly the Glider had no visible moving parts and the cloud cover was light to average. Luckily the glider generated a slipstream as it came down from a high dive, so I just waited for it to do it's routine again and bingo, caught the stream..
My last few are from the WW2 ground theatre. Unfortunately I missed the big fire ball explosion on the first day, and the second day was less impressive only because a large area of the field caught fire!!!, So for this setup I positioned my tripod with my camera in portrait mode. Then with my remote timer ready I picked the time and triggered the shots.
The last shot a poor German prisoner getting thrown around a bit by a British Para, Yes it's all acting!!!. I actually like this shot and the focusing was rushed which I think has added to the theme. So a quick convert to Black and White and Bobs your uncle.
So lets start with the planes, Jet Fighters not an issue as you set your lens to Horizontal tracking mode (setting 2 for my L Lens) then set your shutter speed to high and hope that the Jet plane fly's past something which can give you some depth of field and thus present the illusion of speed.
However my primary subjects were World War 2 fighters with nice spinning prop blades, so a little more thought was needed. The trick here is to not capture at such a high shutter speed so that your plane resembles an Airfix model hanging from a kids bedroom ceiling.
So lets take a look at my first shot.
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| f29, 1/250 ISO800 190mm (CR) |
So after watching a few plane passes, and running some manual tests to see what my camera was telling me, it was time so with a steady hand I used single focus point and focused on the target, then panning left as the subject flew by I clicked away.
The prop motion I think is perhaps borderline in terms of rotation pattern but happy with the result and I believe I achieved my objective.
My Next subject was an old Pioneer race between a very old car and 3 guys racing Penny Farthings. I first watched these guys ride around to sort of gauge how quickly they could move. I wished I could have got myself down to a lower point for this as the angle and composition appears to have lost some of it's swagger, however capturing the car in the background, adds to the flavour and generally happy with the shot. Unfortunately I had to crop the photo tight as I caught someones head as I panned left.
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| f22, 1/60 ISO200, 110mm (CR) |
My next shot offered a different challenge, firstly the Glider had no visible moving parts and the cloud cover was light to average. Luckily the glider generated a slipstream as it came down from a high dive, so I just waited for it to do it's routine again and bingo, caught the stream..
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| f20, 1/200, +.33exp IS400, 280mm |
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| f11, 1/320, ISO400, 100mm |
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| f8, 1/100 ISO400, 160mm (Converted to B/W) |
Nice photos. The Penny Farthing one looks cool and you get a real sense of the size of the explosion with the portrait view of the explosion.
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