i went to my first airshow yesterday at the orange county airport, montgomery ny, not to be confused with stewart international airport and air national guard base just a few miles away in newburg ny. that was where they based the planes for the show. due to having to wait for the ceiling to lift causing a 2 hour delay, we did not get all the advertised performers, but we did get panchito the b-25, the raptor, the f-18 and the full thunderbirds show. i used my sony A1 and the 100-400 f4-5.6 gm lens exclusively. this show had no static displays due to no longer being at stewart. apparently the port authority of ny which runs stewart and the show company got into a beef over covid restrictions and crowd size last year so they moved the show to this smaller private /corporate airport. they did have the show last year, they made boxes on the grass and 1 car per box you could sit in your car and eat your own food. this year it was back to normal. never having been to an airshow and the photopit sold out, i ponied up for a vip seat. glad i did, the photo pit, while dead show center did not have any shade whatsoever. for $60.00 more i got lunch, unlimited soda/water or beer. and a great big shade tent area, which while it wasn't absolutely needed, had the sun been out it would have been a real need. well first impressions, LOUD, FAST, and boy do my panning skills need work. 8935 photos downloaded to the next di and if i have 5 keepers per thousand i'm going to be happy. at least that's the impression so far after culling out over 1300 just from the 2 prop stunt performers and starting through the b-25 shots. this is hard, physical photography, my arms were tired by 5pm when i got back in my car for the drive home, it's only 154 miles from my driveway to parking, made it up in right around 3 hours, vs almost 5 to get home due to all the new york city and long island bound upstate returnees on a sunday night. i haven't looked at any of the jet photos yet, i may have more keepers there with higher shutter speeds. the thunderbirds show is just magnificent, just the noise, the speed, very visually strong. so John here's one for you, panchito the b-25 what we did not get were the p-51, the class of 45 flight, F-4u and P-51, the geico skywriters, and the black knights parachute team from west point. did get a little demo of their helicopter but ceiling was too low for them to jump
Well done!! I know from experience that sun can be brutal, even when overcast, as I got so badly burned one Saturday I had to wear a sweatshirt with long sleeves to cover up on Sunday. Really looking forward to your shots!
and this was cool, us navy legacy flight, an F4U-4 corsair, "korean war hero" and the F-18 super hornet Rino demonstration team making passes together
well it'll take some time, i have to cull and process almost 9000shots, but i'll get there, i just wanted to throw a couple up there
Nice work Gary! That prop blur on Panchito is great and not easy to do. Sorry you missed out on Quicksilver and Class of 45. Both are great shows.
as much as anything this is what i went for, for many years on long island i grew up with people who's fathers worked at Grumman's in calverton, some of my contemporaries worked there on f-14's, i watched many of them taking test and acceptance flights, landing and taking off, although all the really high speed stuff was done out over the ocean so as not to break windows. so i had never seen the high speed vapor trails, and was hoping i might get one, via good equipment, some panning practice and a whole lot of luck, well i did, i present the f-22 raptor demonstration aircraft, doing it's almost supersonic thing
@gary Very nice! Thank you for sharing. Can’t wait to see more photos. What was your set up? Anything you will do differently next time?
Setup was my sony a1 with the sony 100-400, only lens i used all day. Prop planes such as panchito 1/60 shutter speed and f8 aperture. The jets were 1/2000 With f8. Thats why no prop blur for navy legacy flight, i forgot to slow up the shutter. High speed 20 frames per second with af-c continuous focus and focus sensitivity 5. Even with that you are going to have a lot more misses than hits. You need a bunch of memory. I was using my 2 cfexpress type A at 160gb each and was hitting card full a lot and continously downloading to the nexto which got hot to touch. Next time i would go with a bunch of high speed 128 gb cards, download when needed and not hold down the trigger as much, i aso would wait until the planes get closer. 8935 shots is overkill. Just be aware that you need to be ready, these jets move so fast. Next time i might try the 200-600 maybe bring both next time Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk
That A1 looks like an awesome beast of a camera. What is Focus Sensitivity? I wish Nikon had a mirrorless 100-400. You bringing the 200-600 to Disney?
focus sensitivity is a setting in the menu to allow to focus point to react to moving subjects, 1-5, with 5 quicker to react, the downside is your focus points could shift due to wind blowing a leaf or a branch in the background, but for quick moving subjects it is the way to go setting at 5. not bringing the 200-600 to disney, not unless someday i should drive down, which is very unlikely ever, given how i feel about 20 hours of I-95. and other than the safari ride it would be overkill for anything at disney, not even bringing the 100-400 for that reason. longest and largest lens for me this year is the new tamron 28-200. and yes, the sony A1 lives up to all the hype.
some of these airshow types are dedicated , the guy seated to my right was manhandling a canon 500 f4 all day, having had one i know about that 11 lb lens
