Blue Angels

©JP Parmley

The Blue Angels were in Dayton this weekend for the air show.  If you have never seen them, you need to find the closest show to you and go.  It is worth the trip!  

Here are some images that I captured during their show.  There are a few things to set up before you start taking pictures of planes flying over 500 mph towards each other with a closing speed of 1000mph+.  If you just turn on the camera and start shooting, most of your pics are going to be out of focus or the camera will not take the picture right when you want.

1) Set drive to AI SERVO.  This will allow you to gain focus and keep it as planes approach at these speeds. 
2) Set the metering to SPOT.  If you are shooting against a bright sky and are using an evaluative meter, the plane will be underexposed.
3) For these pics I wanted to maintain an aperture that I know my lens performs well at and is sharp.  I set the camera to an aperture priority (Av) at 5.6.
4) Next, I wanted a shutter in the 1000-2500 range depending on if I was shooting into the sun. So I adjusted the ISO until the shutter was consistently in this range while focused on a plane in the sky.  ISO 400 is where I landed.
5) Finally, the white balance was changed to outdoors (sun). 

So with a Canon 7D, a 70-200 2.8L IS lens and a Tamron 1.4x extender, I had an effective zoom of 448mm.  As F18s approached, I would grab focus as they approached and then shot in the highest drive mode at 8fps and shot away.

Take off with a 90 degree vertical climb

My favorite shot of the day.  Vapor trails off the wings.

The diamond formation

Think about this....over 1000mph closing rate and I got it dead on top of each other!

I could have used a slower shutter to correct the exposure of the planes.  Oh that's right we always shoot RAW so we have full control afterwards!

Up, Up and away!

Final Salute.