I decided to check out the arrivals at RIAT this year on the Thursday as that looked like the best day weather wise, it started off ok but soon deteriorated by about 4PM and then the rain came as you can see in the photos. The weekend forecast is ok at the moment so it should be a good day themes this year are NATO 6oth anniversary, sea search 09 and its the Royal Navy 100th anniversary. Link here -http://www.airtattoo.com/airshow
All the photos taken on the Nikon D300 using the Nikon 70-200mm VR lens with the addition of a teleconvertor either a 2x or 1.4x for extra length. A zoom lens is better than a fixed focal as you can pan out on larger aircraft or zoom in for tighter shots or shots of smaller aircraft, if your selling photos of planes you often need to get the full plane in the frame bits of tail or wing missing are a big no no.
I dont use a tripod as they lack the freedom of movement you need; to capture sharp images you need to be shooting at least 500/1 anyway I like to shoot at about f10 with either 1/800 or 1/1250 depending on the overhead conditions usually i can get away with ISO 200 but when it rains or the cloud comes in the ISO will need to go up to 400 in order to keep the shutter speed high.
Focus settings on the D300 are complex the settings I use are as follows put it in S - for single rather than continuous focus - this makes sure the subject is in focus prior to shutter release, set the frame rate to CH - 8FPS with the separate battery pack, on the back rear focus selector I either use the white rectangle or the square with the cross-hairs, sometimes setting the white rectangle doesn't work quick enough as the camera will often hunt for a subject, so you can give the camera a start by selecting the centre selector and it will focus on anything within the 9 selectors around it, this usually works pretty well and means you dont miss a shot or have loads of out of focus blurred shots, in the viewfinder you can see which focus points are in focus when depress the shutter button, you can also move them around with the rear dial. In C for continuous focus select the middle position of the rear focus selector and 3D focus in the custom settings menu and the D300 will follow the subject around the frame which sometimes can also be useful.
Ken Rockwell has a much better explanation of these settings here.
