Big boys toys

[J.Davis]

From our flying field on Sunday.

I tried for some motion in the background, but failed.

[DaveB]

I tried for some motion in the background, but failed.

In fact your shutter speed is so high that the propeller is almost frozen.

Rather than shooting in aperture-priority at f/4 and ISO 400 (which resulted in a shutter speed of 1/4000s for #2), try a slower ISO such as 100 (the D60 does this I think) which would drop the shutter speed to 1/1000s immediately. You could also stop down to say f/5.6, which would have reduced the shutter speed further to 1/500s. Experiment with different shutter speeds.

In fact, for subjects like this I use manual mode instead. Aperture-priority will change the exposure based on the scene, which might not be what you want here. Once you've got the exposure right for your plane (and possibly made sure the clouds aren't going to be overexposed) you shouldn't be worried about what the background is as you pan around following the plane. In aperture-priority the exposure will be different if there's a cloud in the background vs. a green hill. In manual, start off by using the viewfinder's meter to find the shutter speed suggested by the camera, then take a few shots and check the histogram to see if you need to adjust it slightly. Once it's set, you won't need to change it (until the light illuminating the scene changes: clouds passing over the sun can complicate things).

[J.Davis]

Thanks for the tips Dave, I am learning slowly.

[BBJ]

Hi John, Nice shots and as said before shutter speed will kill the shots if too high, but you will learn that as you go and well i love the shots anyhow as a Gold Wings Pilot i infact am a bit of a dare devil so the paternship in the last 2 pics are my type of toys. My shed has seen a few less of these toys as no room and well have been very slack for awhile now in flying and got rid of some of my scale aircraft and kept a few sport and paternships to flog about if i get the urdge again.

John i would try shutter priority and around 320. once you start getting around 500 you will freeze the prop.

Cheers
John
BBJ