Evening/Night Shots

[Ken91]

My first night air show was at Sun-n-Fun on Saturday, April 8. I tried a few pictures and here are a couple of my better ones.
P-51 at sunset piloted by Lee Lauderback. I really liked the sun shining on the belly of Crazy Horse. I didn't get a good one of him coming back the other way with the sun on the top.


Here's a picture from the Aeroshell Team:

[AnthonyC]

Recently had the rare opportunity to do a Sunset/ Night shoot with the United States Air Force Thunderbirds on the ramp at Peterson AFB, CO. The Thunderbirds had just completed their flyover and demonstration for the 2017 USAFA Graduation.

That evening there was a nice sense of accomplishment for the team and for my self considering the year prior while I was photographing the team in the same location, TB6 had an issue and was forced to safely eject from his F-16.

[Photographycool]

All Photography and All Photography Discussion is very good. When people will see. SO They will feel good. Again Thank u for sharing with us

[AnthonyC]

VFA-211 dropped in to KAPA (Centennial Airport,CO) with 10 hornets for some fuel after their 2017 cruise! I was able to catch some burner shots of them headed home.

VFA-211 Burners! by Anthony Cornelius, on Flickr

[wfooshee]

This was, as far as I know, the next-to-last Fat Albert JATO, November 14, 2008, during the twilight/night show of the Homecoming show at Pensacola NAS. (The last one was the next afternoon during the final daytime show of the year.) Camera at this time was a D50, not the best low-light camera ever made...This image is boosted and filtered every which way from Sunday!!)


From the 2009 version of the Blue Angels Homecoming night show, a pair of YAK-52s belonging to Aerostar.


This was the same show in 2012. The F/A-18E Super Hornet demo, done at twilight, making the afterburner flame quite visible! (I've moved up to a D7000 here. Still not a great low-light camera, but so much better than the D50!!)


From 2014's show, Gene Saucy's "Showcat"


During 2015's show, they cut short the performance by Team AeroDynamix and their eight RV8s for an emergency recovery of an EA-18 Growler. It was an arrested landing, so the tail hook threw sparks behind the aircraft.


I haven't "processed" the Growler's recovery shots other than to bring up exposure quite a bit. It was DARK out there!!! After a few minutes to safe the aircraft and tow it off, the show resumed with the next act.




And from just last month at the 2017 show, wingwalking at night, by Ashley Shelton, piloted by her husband Greg in his Super Stearman.


And Team Redline in a pair of RV8s with pyrotechnics.

[ClickJ]

I hate to bring such an old topic back from the dead but I thought it would be a good place to ask: do you have any tips for shooting evening/night shows? On the surface it seems fairly straightforward as far as exposure/equipment/etc. and I'll be browsing some metadata beforehand, but I've never photographed low-light flying before and given how uncommon the opportunities seem to be I would like to be as prepared as possible.

I'm planning on the evening shows at the Avenger Reunion and Battle Creek this year.

Normally I use a crop body (Nikon D500) and a 60-600 f4.5-6.3 lens, but am considering renting a D780 (full-frame 24mp), and a Nikon 300mm f2.8 although I am concerned about that being too short on a full-frame.

I appreciate any input you might have!

[RyanS]

I hate to bring such an old topic back from the dead but I thought it would be a good place to ask: do you have any tips for shooting evening/night shows? On the surface it seems fairly straightforward as far as exposure/equipment/etc. and I'll be browsing some metadata beforehand, but I've never photographed low-light flying before and given how uncommon the opportunities seem to be I would like to be as prepared as possible.

I'm planning on the evening shows at the Avenger Reunion and Battle Creek this year.

Normally I use a crop body (Nikon D500) and a 60-600 f4.5-6.3 lens, but am considering renting a D780 (full-frame 24mp), and a Nikon 300mm f2.8 although I am concerned about that being too short on a full-frame.

I appreciate any input you might have!

I find that I have to shoot full manual once it is semi-dark as you really just want to capture the aircraft lights but the camera will try to expose the entire scene to be 'light' so it will pick a shutter speed much longer than you need/want. I think I typically do like 1/60th of a second as a start and adjust from there. It's ok if it's underexposed because the lights and firework spots are easy to brighten in PS without too much trouble.

Basically you end up playing a game to balance the shutter speed with the ISO. My strategy has always been to use a low enough ISO that noise isn't a huge problem, and gamble with the corresponding low shutter speed. The way I see it is you will either lose every shot to noise, or almost every shot to blur. Put another way - if a shot is too noisy to use, it doesn't matter how sharp the plane is!

However this is being turned on its head because Photoshop just rolled out an AI noise reducer that is apparently amazing at saving shots so we should all have a lot more leeway in shooting in the dark.

[wfooshee]

Turn off auto-focus and prefocus on something just a bit farther than the showline to take advantage of the hyperfocal distance. In the dark you'll never get autofocus to work!

Actually, don't auto-anything. Set your ISO as high as you can stand it with what your camera produces noise-wise. You'll be shooting wide-open on the aperture unless you're shooting flames, like the jet trucks or pyro, and maybe even then. Balance shutter speed to expose for whatever's lit up out there. Most night-show aircraft carry plenty of lights to illuminate themselves, as you can see from the shots earlier in the thread. For dusk jets, try not no go slower than 1/500, but once it's dark, try not to go faster than 1/60th. As stated above, there will be motion-blurred throw-aways, but you'll get some keepers, too.

[ClickJ]

Thank you both for your input! Lots of good info to jot down in the ol' camera bag notepad.