Good airshow lens?

Hi again Charlie...


You'll like that 170 - 500mm. It's a really neat lens, and you'll
never look at a bird, airplane or even the moon again without thinking
about grabbing that lens! Just remember that bit about beyond infinity
focus and have a blast with it!

I can't wait to try it! Looks like I'll have to take advantage of an old
friend who owns a bed & breakfast in the Lake District and hang around the
places Rusty does to get his excellent low-flying RAF shots...

As and when the combination gets used, I'll post the results here...

cheers m8

Pete

Hi there Bob...

I handhold, but the Minolta Maxxum 7D DSLR I use it on has
sensor-based image stabilization. Even with sensor crop factor making
it essentially a 750mm, I get consistently sharper shots than with my
old Sigma 500 on 35mm Maxxum 9xi bodies.

It's a matter of trying the combination hand-held and seeing what the
results are like. For whatever reason, I just always thought this
combination (or any large lens for that matter) would need either a monopod
or tripod for best results. I'm still going to purchase a decent monopod
just for good measure as spending four hours on a flight-line following
everything in flight and shooting away is bound to have a tiring effect on
the arms...

Cheers

Pete

Attachment decoded: P-51D NL51KD 44-73436 Olympic Flight Museum
OLM 6-18-06 01.jpg

Very nice indeed Bob.. good clear filling of the shot there! Just the sort
of results I'm going to be looking at - was this shot handheld?

Cheers

Pete

"Charlie" wrote in message
. ..
The ability to hand hold the Bigma is inversely proportional to the length
of time I hold it.

The stark lack of Popeye arms is what has me thinking monopod. Still, I'd
like a better solution for air shows.

I think a monopod is a great choice whenever you have a camera/lens that
needs a little more stability than handheld can provide. It's quick to
turn, if it's tall enough, you can tilt and pan instantly. I got a manfroto
monopod and quick release head and the same head on my tripod for easy
changing if necessary.

Rob

Hi again Bob...

Handheld, and just about falling over backward as I was shooting
rather straight up as the P-51 banked over the tarmac I was standing
on. Another testament to the 7D's image stabilization is that I have
a pretty badly screwed up back, and have a fair bit of trouble just
standing still, much less doing a smooth track on a fast moving
aircraft...

Very nice indeed! I love a good ol'P-51 in a metal finish with good
weather! Can't wait to see what results I get with my combination...

Below is the best of what I was getting with my Panasonic FZ-7.
Ground/static shots were no problem whatsoever, but display images were
another thing altogether!

Cheers

Pete

I took tons of airshow pictures with my Minolta XG-1 and X-700 film camreas.

Here's a shot of a Huey flying over my house the other day. Nikon D80,
Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 95mm. F8 1/1000sec ISO 400 equivalent. Cropped
in *a lot* with PhotoShop. Held in very shaky hands, too.

The damn thing's got more controls than the Space Shuttle but it's got a lot
of potential. I just hope I do.


Regards, PLMerite


"Bob Harrington" wrote in message
...
"Peter.D.Evans" orbscure.AT.hotmail.DOT.com wrote in
. 109.144:

Hi again Bob...

Handheld, and just about falling over backward as I was shooting
rather straight up as the P-51 banked over the tarmac I was standing
on. Another testament to the 7D's image stabilization is that I have
a pretty badly screwed up back, and have a fair bit of trouble just
standing still, much less doing a smooth track on a fast moving
aircraft...

Very nice indeed! I love a good ol'P-51 in a metal finish with good
weather! Can't wait to see what results I get with my combination...

Below is the best of what I was getting with my Panasonic FZ-7.
Ground/static shots were no problem whatsoever, but display images
were another thing altogether!

Beautiful...

But yeah. My first digital camera was a Sony CD1000 back in 2001. It was
okay for static subjects, but all-but useless for aerial photography.
Between the shutter lag, the long blackout of the viewfinder during image
capture, and the single shot buffer that took around 8 seconds to write
the
image off to the CD-R...

Nice toy at the time, but I had to stick with the Minolta film SLRs for
flying displays.

Bob ^,,^