Biggin Hill Festival of Flight

[Paul Heester]

Saw a poster for this event and thought it may interest some members. Its on Saturday 14th June and further details can be found here - http://www.bhfof.com/ Some blurb below.

An entirely new formula for an air event at Biggin Hill Airport, the Festival of Flight has been created to offer to the public dazzling, dynamic entertainment on the ground and in the air for all the family on the afternoon and early evening of a mid-summer day.
The world-famous RAF Aerobatic Team, The Red Arrows, will be making a very special return to Biggin Hill for the Festival to mark the anniversary of their 50th display season at the airfield where the then new team made their very first UK display in 1965.

[Rose]

I'll be there

[Mike Farley]

How did it go? Any pics?

[Rose]

Fab day... And yes, plenty of pictures ! Two albums on my Flikr page -

Red Arrows:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rose_atkinson/sets/72157645047056492/

The rest...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rose_atkinson/sets/72157644771261528/

[Rose]

I took my Canon 5D MKII and 100-400mm lens. I worked out settings in advance and preset them onto two custom buttons - one for prop planes and one for jets. Basic settings for both were: daylight WB, auto ISO, partial metering, AI Servo, shutter priority, continuous shooting. I also dialled in +1/3 exposure compensation as planes are always darker than the surrounding sky. I upped this to +2/3 later in the day when the sun was lower, to compensate for the higher contrast. For prop planes the shutter speed I used was 1/250 and for the jets 1/8000. I set the IS on the lens to panning mode.

[Paul Heester]

@ Rose - Well done on those presets, should have thought of that myself really. Your shots are very sharp as a result

Having never been to the old Biggin Hill airshows I didnt know what to expect but in general we enjoyed ourselves. Had the missus and nipper in tow which restricted the number of shots I could take but I concentrated on the ground shots for most of the day - here are a few - https://www.flickr.com/photos/8182614@N ... 193546902/

The Red Arrows were VERY impressive!

[Rose]

Thanks Paul I do have the advantage of having attended a number of air shows at Biggin Hill over the years.. and I get to practice taking photos of planes when they fly over us at home, which is pretty regularly now we have the Heritage Hangar operating a fleet of WWII planes. But there is some useful info online about how to set up your camera for this sort of photography - I'm sure that's how I found out about dialling in some extra exposure. It makes sense but you don't necessarily think about it ! And I use the custom buttons to preset my settings for almost everything I do that I can pre-plan. It saves so much time - and reduces the margin for mistakes

[Mike Farley]

Glad you both had a good day. Rose's technique of using presets certainly paid dividends. Thanks for sharing your pics.

[davidb]

Biggin Hill was a great day out. The weather wasn't particularly helpful with a little rain at times but the displays were great.

I used a 70-300mm zoom on my 1DX (I've found that the combination of camera and 100-400mm len's a little heavy for this kind of work). I have over 600 pictures to sort through and identify and a lot of exposure adjustments (I didn't plan my day as well as Rose - in fact, I didn't plan my day). I can imagine there will be a lot of aerobatic photos in the coming year's competitions.

The preparations that Rose went through is something I need to do.

[davidc]

Could you use a monopod to offset the weight and give more reach? I can heartily recommend the tamron 150-600 too, looking forward to an airshow over here to try my hand at it!