Help me shoot an F-111

[Spooky]

This Saturday night in Brisbane is riverfire (a big fireworks display) and the finale will hopefully be a fly over by one or two F-111s with their afterburners on and dumping fuel.

Most have seen it before (including me) but it still gives me a thrill, lights up the city and is a crowd favourite.

This year I want to get some shots of it. It is complicated because the flight path is unknown and until the jets light up their burners they are pretty hard to see in the dark as they typically come over pretty low and swoop down the river.

I plan to use my 70-200 VR so I have some reach. I will only get a few seconds at best to take decent photos.

My main concern is the exposure. While the jets are dark the fuel igniting will be bright and will fool my D70 no doubt.

Should I use manual exposure? I don't have much experience with this.
Can anyone suggest a way of setting up a manual exposure that would do the job?

or

Should I bracket with exposure and use continous shooting mode?

Suggestions welcome.

[birddog114]

spooky,
I thought it has been cancelled as the following thread:

http://www.d70users.com/viewtopic.php?t=8821

[Matt. K]

Spooky
Use spot metering and manual focus. Shoot in RAW. Fire off a whole mag full of images and you will get your keeper.

[Spooky]

Birdy, I understand negotiations are still underway, fingers crossed.

Matt, do I try and expose on the aircraft with spot metering rather than the flame?

What aperture would be best?

[lkgrainger]

Due to public demand there back! Yipeee

[DaveB]

do I try and expose on the aircraft with spot metering rather than the flame?

If you meter on the flame you'll get very dark frames!

My experience (with EOS bodies) tracking F111s doing dump-n-burns is that you'll have fun trying to keep spot metering on the plane.
Keep in mind that you'll only get one (or if you're really lucky, two) passes at it, so if you get it dramatically wrong you'll be stuffed. I'd second the advice to shoot in RAW (I do everything in RAW these days).

What aperture would be best?

Usually at night I shoot on manual, taking a test frame or two to set things up.
The contrast will be massive, so I think you'll have to go for either a bright flame and a black sky, or a lighter sky with the outline of a plane and a BRIGHT flame. The appropriate aperture will probably depend on what your focus technique is like.
The final balance of ISO/shutter/aperture is hard to predict: if it's near the city you'll probably have a brighter ambient sky than I've had.

Good luck, and have fun! I usually come away from the F111s with a huge grin on my face.

[cordy]

this is the way you do it (coming from past experiences)

set the camera up on a tripod. Get yourself a remote control. Set it to F10/F11 and a 2 second shutter speed. Wait till you hear/see them and press the remote, cha ching!



These two came from so the wrong direction however. They were spossed to fly across in front of us, but came from behind. Ask around, they usually do the same path up in Brissy afaik so you can set yourself up.

Shooting them hand held is almost impossible, given it will be dark and they are that damn fast (see my thread about D70 and fast focusing, especially fast jets)

Chris

[DaveB]

Nice work Chris, even if they stuffed you up with their approach directions.