BillF

Thank you in advance for any help you can give me on my topic. I'm going to the Fleet Week show in San Francisco coming up in Oct. I am posting a few pics from last years show so you can see what I'm doing wrong. I am using a Canon Rebel XSI with the kit lens 55-250 4-5.6 lens. I also have the 18.55 kit lens and recently bought a 50 mm f1.8. The pics I post today were taken using a uv filter. I did some touch up using picasa making the gray skies of that day much more blue. I would appreciate any and all comments to help me get better results this year.

focal length 55mm f5.6 ap mode 1/1000


Focal length 250 mm f5.6 ap mode 1/1250


Focal length 250 mm f5.6 ap mode 1/1250

sinatraman Loc: Vero Beach Florida, Earth,alpha quaudrant

up your iso so you can use faster shutter speeds. see if you can find a nice used 300mm tele or a zoom up to 300. the 250 isn't getting you close enough to the action. flying acrobatic aircraft are difficult to master espically jets. you need to predict where they are going to be. I would also press shutter half way down to get focus lock then pan snapping at a point justy ahead of aircraft. a tele extender will give you more focal range but will cost you amximum apeture. However if the airshow is bright sunny day you arent going to need widest apeture anyway.

BillF

Thanks for your advice for me. I'm so confused by all that is involved with the whole process. What would you suggest for the ISO setting? The pics I posted were all at 200 ISO. I found a lens on Buy.com but not sure if it's a good deal or not cause it has high f number. I post the link here if you could look at it and maybe give your opinion. I realize it's not a great lens but for the small price maybe its ok for my purpose. Thanks again for your input. Here is the link for the lens http://www.buy.com/prod/rokinon-500mm-1000mm-f-8-0-mirror-lens-for-canon-eos-50d-30d-20d-5d-7d/q/loc/111/215382044.html

Rich Loc: Titusville, Fl

Good advice Sinatraman

gessman Loc: Colorado

I'll chime in on the lens you're looking at - that lens could be good but with limits. It is made by people who used to make lens for Minolta cameras and many of them were very good. Without testing this specific lens, it's difficult to know how good it will be. The downside is that it is a "mirror" lens and characteristic of that is that the center will most likely be brighter while the outside of the frame will be darker which means that you'll have to "center" most of your pictures to ensure that your subject will show up brightly. "Centering" your subject is often considered to be compositionally undesirable. Also, when you zoom, the minimum aperture will go up so when you're at 1000mm your aperture will be 16, no longer 8 as it was at 500mm. At those focal lengths and apertures, a tripod is highly desirable which is not good for fast moving objects. It might be better at the beach where "centering" doesn't matter and the girls are stationary and don't mind. :twisted: