Photographing Formation Fly-bys

[LTFT5]

Just wondered how people manage to capture formation fly-bys nicely in focus and well exposed, ie centre spot focusing or manual, exposure compensation - or +, problem I have is that my shots tend to be slightly out of focus even with a high shutter speed. Also I tend to get most of the aircraft in but they are very small and I have to crop heavily but if I zoom in I tend to miss aircraft out of the frame .

MTIA
Andy

[awacsfan]

I'll attempt an answer. First, I do have similar problems - the viewfinder only gives about 90 - 95% or so from the actual picture, if you are wearing glasses (such as myself) it gets even worse.

As far as focusing for formation flying - depending on the weather (and therefore light) conditions, I use all AF fields of the camera, but metering is done right in the center. Using all AF fields ensures you get a good average all across the image. If you use center AF field, you get the center sharp but the ones flying on the outside are often too soft.

On bright sunny days, I use -1/3 exposure compensation, on grey overcast days I sometime try + 1/3 but in many cases I just leave it as it is (I'm shooting on ISO 200 anyway and doing RAWs only).

Additionally, it takes lots and lots of practice but since we are in the digital age, 30 or 50 shots really don't cost any money and worst than can happen is, that you delete them afterwards. I'm far from "perfect" myself but try to practice whenever and wherever I can and sometime just play with different settings to see what works best.

What kind of camera and lens are you using if I may ask?

I hope this helps a little bit but am sure that many of the "pro's" here on the board can offer additional advice,
cheers

Andy

[LTFT5]

Thanks very much for the tips guys put them to good use at Coningsby on Tuesday and managed a couple of nice shots of Typhoons in formation.

Once again thankyou for taking the time to help.

Andy

[MIKE]

Hi
What setting would you use AV/TV or Manual?
mike

[awacsfan]

Hi
What setting would you use AV/TV or Manual?
mike

I'd go with TV - I seldom used AV for photographing flying displays (static is a different ball game)

Andy