I was nearly roasted red when I stood under the hot afternoon sun yesterday to take photographs of fighter planes flying around in the sky. Together with hundreds of photographers, we were all armed with our telephoto lens, trying to “shoot down” the planes with ultra high shutter speed. While many were armed with their big white bazookas, I am just equipped with my little Sony Alpha 200 and a tiny 75-300mm kit lens.

In case you are wondering what Air Show I am talking about, it is the Singapore Air Show 2008, which Singapore is organising for the first time at Changi Exhibition Center after Asian Aerospace had moved out.

My photos didnt turn out as great as I thought it will be, I had made a few mistakes in the settings and planning. Since this is my first try at an Air Show, I had learnt many tips, which I thought it will be good to share around.

Ten Tips for shooting an Air Show

Tip 1: Research before you go

Go to the offical website, find out the timing of the aerobatic displays. More importantly, you must know where the planes are coming from! It is also good to know if it is going to be a solo flight or group flight performance. This will help you decide what kind of lens you should prepare first.

Tip 2: Don’t bring a tripod

Don’t bother wasting time to mount your equipment on a tripod. You are not going to move faster than the super sonic planes on top of your head. By the time you shifted your position to get the optimal ultra steady shot of the plane, all you will get is just a photo of the smoke or maybe an bird that is suffering from concussion.

Tip 3: Shoot in JPEG instead

Shoot in JPEG instead. You are going to need your camera processor to focus on the continuous advancement drive of the shooting instead of writing raw information into the memory chip. And you are not going to look through 1000000 of shots in the RAW viewer and edit them right?

Tip 4: Use a lower ISO

I used ISO 400 for the aerobatic display. BIG MISTAKE. I cannot do any nice cropping without the irriating noise. I think I should used ISO 100 in future since all Air Shows take place in a bright and sunny weather. If it is going to be a gloomy or even raining, I am not going to try take photos of planes in that situation. And why is my ISO 400 so noisy??? Is it because of the clear sky or the range or the exposure? I need to do some tests again.

Tip 5: Use manual focus

Same thing, Not sure for those lens with USM, SSM, HSM or any super duper sonic motorised focusing lens but manual focusing is the only way you can catch up with the fast flying metal beasts. And look out of the viewfinder to gauge roughly their locations first before aiming. They might come from different directions like how you play the sniper games in arcade.

Tip 6: Use a fast shutter speed

My personal opinon is to use at least 1/500s shutter speed to freeze the plane and stop it from running away. You can vary the settings abit but please don’t use speed like 1/30 or 1/15 unless you want to see a plane without a plane.

Tip 7: Don’t just shoot planes

Do not just focus on shooting photographs of aeroplanes. Look out for details, There might be some interesting moments that you can catch. As long as human race is around, there are always bound to be some interesting stuff going on. Catch them!

Tip 8: Look from different angle

This is a standard photography skill. Photos of the same object from different perspective will look dramatically different. Those static displays, shoot them from below, on top, left, right, close, far. Do worry about them. They will not fly away. You can take your time.

Tip 9: Don’t just use a single setting

Check your histogram and do not trust your LCD display. Play with different settings. Your metering results might be wrong due to the extreme contrasty environment. Get some of your photos overexposed or underexposed purposely. This way, you can diversify and reduce the risk of all your photos getting ruined due to wrong exposure.

Tip 10: Take a break

It is going to be hot, uncomfortable and thirsty. Take a break and have a cool refreshing drink first before continuing. You are not going to have any good shots when you are in a mentally unstable and irritable state.

Here are some photos from the Singapore Air Show. There are alot of mistakes that I can personally spot. Not enough exposure, contrast and noise! Mistakes make me grow. I hope the ten tips are useful for you guys.

All shots are taken with Sony Alpha 200, Konica Minolta 17-35mm lens and Konica Minolta 70-300mm lens. Aerobatic displays shot in ISO 400 and Shutter Priority Mode. Other photos shot in Auto ISO and Aperture Priority Mode. Exposure correction and saturation done in Photoshop. No sharpening is performed.