Airshow photography settings: sort them in the car park

Airshows get much easier when you decide the important settings before the flying starts. The display order flips between jets and props all afternoon, so you need to be able to react quickly to get the shots you want.

19 August 20269 minute read

B1 hitting the tarmac hard whilst in the circuit at RAF Fairford

The mistake that costs the most shots at an airshow isn't normally a problem with your technique. You set a fast shutter speed for a pass of some jets, you grab an overpriced airshow burger and whilst you're still wiping the ketchup off your face a Spitfire hurtles down the display line. You start shooting but you're still on the settings from twenty minutes ago and end up a bunch of shots with the propeller frozen, resembling an engine failure. And nothing about those shots are recoverable afterwards. This is why the settings you'll be using are well worth deciding before anything is flying and while you still have both hands free. If your camera has custom modes, this can really help too!

Airshow photography settings: quick starting points

Subject	Shutter speed
Jets	1/1000s or faster, 1/1600s and up for fast low passes
Propeller aircraft	Around 1/125s to 1/250s, or 1/320s for a safer start
Helicopters	Around 1/80s to 1/160s

Continuous autofocus with a medium zone or subject tracking covers pretty much all bases, so focus is the one thing you can typically set and forget. The shutter speeds however are a different story, and they can change even for a single aircraft. The shutter speed that suits a propeller aircraft turning slowly in front of the crowd isn't the same shutter speed that suits the same aircraft coming down the line flat out. It's best to decide how slow you want to go with the props (go too slow and you risk an unsharp shot) and how fast you want to go for the jets. Keep these two numbers in mind as your reference. Make sure to put on burst mode which will increase your chances of getting those keepers!

Jets, props and helicopters need different shutter speeds

Jets sit on the easier end of this, because there's no rotating props to worry about, meaning you can crank up the shutter speed to ensure a crisp sharp shot. For props and helicopters though, you need to balance that shutter speed between a sharp aircraft and a propeller that still looks like it's turning. Here are the ranges worth starting from.

Jets. Start around 1/1000s or faster. For a fast low pass, 1/1600s and above is a sensible place to be.
Propeller aircraft. Roughly 1/125s to 1/250s if you want visible prop blur. If your panning is still hit and miss, 1/250s is a useful compromise.
Helicopters. Roughly 1/80s to 1/160s. The rotors turn more slowly, so they need a slower shutter to show movement.

Generally speaking, the slower you go, the better the disc looks (if you're going for that full disc look) but the more shots you'll end up binning due to them being unsharp. That trade-off always exists, but with practice you can increase the number of keepers by quite a lot. If you need more guidance on shutter speeds, prop blur shutter speeds goes into it in more depth.

A Bf 109 lifting off at Cosford, its propeller blades blurred and the airframe sharp against streaked trees. — A Bf 109 leaving the ground at Cosford, 1/160 at f/9, right in the sweet spot of propeller motion blur with the aircraft still sharp. That's the goal!

Two custom modes that you can set at home

Jet settings on one, prop settings on the other, both done at the kitchen table the night before. A flick of the dial is much easier than rebuilding your exposure while the next pass is already happening.

Exposing an aircraft against bright sky

Your camera's meter looks at the whole scene, and a big bright sky convinces it that everything in front of it is brighter than it really is. You end up with a beautifully exposed cloud and an aircraft that's gone dark. There are two ways round it. Either dial in somewhere between a third and a full stop of positive exposure compensation and keep half an eye on the background as the aircraft moves across it, or go to manual, meter off the aircraft in the light you've actually got, and leave it there until that light changes. Manual sounds like the harder option but it's actually the easier one, because the background will go from sky to trees to hills during a single pass whilst the sun falling on the aircraft has barely changed at all. This is another one worth sorting in the car park: take a shot of a static aircraft in the same light, check the back of the camera, and you've got your starting point before anything is flying.

A close view of an A-10 firing its cannon, gun smoke rolling back over the sunlit nose and the pilot visible in the cockpit. — An A-10 live firing, at 1/4000 and ISO 500. The aircraft is lit rather than left as a dark shape against a bright sky, and with no propeller to worry about you can crank the shutter speed up as high as you like.

Flat grey light is the harder one, and no amount of exposure compensation fixes it. A grey aircraft against a grey sky gives you almost nothing to separate the two, so the shot arrives home already short of contrast. Protect the highlights, accept that it's going to need some work in editing, and don't wait for the camera to find contrast that was never there. On days like that, turning round and shooting on the ground is often the better call. Crews, static aircraft and the crowd all still look good in flat light.

Autofocus: keep it simple

Autofocus at an airshow is easier than almost anything else you'll point a camera at, because an aircraft against clear sky is big, high contrast and has nothing behind it to confuse the camera. So set it once and then leave it alone. Start here:

continuous autofocus
a medium AF zone
aircraft detection if your camera has it

The one that catches everybody out is the low pass against trees, buildings or the crowd, where the camera is suddenly offered a hundred things with more contrast than the aircraft has. Switching to a smaller AF area sorts it, and it's the only autofocus change worth making during a display, so make sure you know which button does that on your camera without having to look down. Other than that, resist the fiddling. You don't need a different setup for every aircraft, and if you're in the menu between passes you'll miss the next one.

What lens works best?

A 100-400mm covers most of what happens at most airshows. It's duller advice than buy the longest lens you can afford, and it's a lot more useful. Reach beyond that helps with distant display lines and high passes, but longer isn't automatically better. At a small show a 600mm has you fighting all afternoon to keep the whole aircraft in shot. Leave yourself some room around the aircraft. You can always crop in later, but a clipped wingtip is a binned shot.

Bring something wider as well, even if it stays in the bag until the flying has finished. Static aircraft, crews, marshals, the crowd, a formation taxiing in, the shape of the airfield itself. A year later those are the shots that still look like that particular day at that particular show, whilst your long lens shots of the display will look much like everybody else's.

Think about where you stand

Most people check where the sun is. Far fewer check what's behind the aircraft. Before you settle in for the afternoon, look past the display line at what the aircraft will be flying against: trees, hangars, a hill, open sky. Each one changes how much the aircraft stands out, and a dark aircraft against a dark hangar is hard work whatever settings you use. The sun moves a long way over a full display day too, so a spot that works beautifully in the morning can have you shooting straight into the light by late afternoon. Have a look at the programme, work out when the aircraft you actually care about are flying, and stand accordingly. You don't have to hold the same patch of grass all day, and moving between displays is often the easiest fix there is.

Five things worth checking before the first pass

Prop shutter speed. Check the display order, and if a propeller aircraft is coming up, make sure you haven't left the jet settings on. This is the one that costs the most shots.
Heat haze. Aircraft low over hot tarmac can look soft even when focus was perfect, and there isn't much you can do about it afterwards, so wait for them to climb away from it if you can.
Room around the aircraft. Shoot a little wider than feels necessary when the aircraft is moving quickly.
Cards and batteries. High burst rates chew through both. Bring more than you think you'll need, and format the cards before you leave the house.
The ground. Crews, pilots, marshals, families, people walking back from an aircraft. Don't spend the whole day looking upwards.

Two Phantom crew silhouetted against a sunset, walking across the apron with their kit, the jet parked behind them with its canopy open. — The last one on that list, and the one everybody skips. A Phantom crew walking back for the debrief at sunset, and it's the kind of shot still worth looking at in ten years.

Panning, quickly

At slower shutter speeds it's your technique deciding whether the shot is sharp, not the camera. Pick the aircraft up early, well before you want the shot, and follow it smoothly. Rotate from the waist rather than swinging your arms, keep your feet planted and your elbows tucked in, and keep the movement going after the burst has finished. Stopping as you let go of the shutter is what softens the end of a sequence. Short bursts, not a held trigger. At 1/160s, two properly sharp keepers out of a run is a good result, so don't be put off by how many you bin. If you fancy practising the same thing on wildlife, birds in flight is the same skill with feathers.

Try the slow version

If you want to practise the part that takes the most repetition, Slow Shutter Showcase and Panning Perfection on Kōlab are both built around it, and repeating one thing against a fixed target is how practice actually moves a technique on. Post the results rather than filing them away, and put the shutter speed next to the shot. Seeing someone's full disc at 1/125s next to your own attempt at 1/250s tells you far more than being told what it ought to look like.

Shoot itAviation

Slow Shutter Showcase

Full discs, movement in the background, and the binned attempts that got you there.

If you'd rather work on the panning on its own, Panning Perfection is the dedicated brief. Same technique, and you don't need an airshow ticket for it.