Yes! Finally after much waiting the military performers are back and they are a welcome sight. I’m not a huge jet fan but I do enjoy when the come out and do their demos. The F-22 is one that always has my attention. First off it just has a bad ass look. when flying, static, profile or even from the tail it just looks like it means business. Then once it starts its performance you just can’t keep your eyes off it.
Using the D4, 200-400 VR and SunSniper Strap, I really like this combo, it’s pretty darn simple to get that shot of this plane. Unlike when photographing prop powered aircraft, jets are very simple. Why is that? Well I can shoot in aperture priority at 1/1500th a second and that fast shutter speed makes a huge difference. I can’t do that with a prop plane because I want that prop to be blurred not frozen. Pilots don’t like frozen props and somehow they have this uncanny ability to always find images of their planes. This means having to shoot in shutter priority at less then 1/125th to get a blur. This past weekend it was 1/80th and 1/60th the whole time. Now I’ll be honest I ended throwing a lot away due to being a little rusty but the keepers, as you can see in my last blog post, have great props.
I’ve seen a lot of great heritage flights but this one I really liked. It was just a great combo between the rugged P-47 “Jug” Thunderbolt, the P-51D Mustang, the Fork Tailed Devil P-38 Lightning, and the F-22 Raptor. From then till now it was great to see the evolution.