Capturing Airplanes

[jamesev]

I have a 70-300 and am off to an air show soon. I know its a broad question but assuming its a nice day are there any preferential settings for getting a good focus on passing airplanes against blue skies?

eg Mode S or A
Metering
Focal points
and so on

anyone had any experience with this?

[karen_s]

I've used continuous focus for air shows and that has worked well. I usually just use the center focus point. All the planes tend to be smack dab in the middle of the image in camera but I shoot a little wide to allow for cropping in PP.

I shoot mostly manual now but on cloudy days, I sometimes return to Shutter priority or Aperture priority. Just makes my life a bit simpler. Air shows are long and I have always found them a great place to experiment and try new things.

As for shutter speeds, I kept it up around or over 1/1000th and with deeper apertures like f/10 to f/14. The deeper aperture is just a little more forgiving as the planes move towards you.

I am also fond of all the smoke trails (and Skip Stewart) because they give a sense of drama and movement.