Someone just handed me some media passes to the Avalon Air Show (advice wanted).

[Brett Harrison]

This is me scrambling to make to most of a great opportunity, If anyone has done something similar, gear recommendations (I have today to hire stuff).

I don't have a sound setup. I'll be hiring from http://www.benshire.com.au/hire/ today, and going tomorrow.

I thought I might grab a mic and one or two long lenses for the airshow itself. I have someone coming with me to do sound.

I have a Tokina 11 16, and a 35 Rokinon Cine.

Anyway I will post the results up here in a week or so.

Cheers!

 

[Robert Hart]

You lucky doer.

Just a few comments.

Find out where the aerobatic display box will be. Your cameras need to be positioned so that you avoid steep overhead follows as these are almost impossible to control. Wides - let the plane do the work and hold for visual references like clouds or the ground as long as possible before moving the frame in the follow. If your wide view cannot include both the aircraft and the visible ground, stick with the aircraft and lose the ground view as treetops just poking into the lowerframe suck as a nice look.

If the aircraft in coming downwards in a wide view and the ground is going to come into the frame, a choice is to widen the view with the zoom, punch the lower frame edge down to include the ground and then hold that level, pan for nose room, then again let the aircraft do the actual work as much as you can. Pan your follow along the same level without dipping or raising unless your aircraft forces you to follow it upwards again.

For take-offs and landings, a position with an unobstructed view of the liftoff point, looking more down the direction of the runway than across it will be a more appealing shot. Side-on pan follows can look good if close on the aircraft to pick up detail like control surface movements, pilot, jet efflux. Unless you have a soft background rolling shutter will be a pest with skewed verticals like towers or poles going through the shot.

Get the heaviest tripod you can find. You are less likely to pull it over in a fast pan. Set the sticks fairly narrow so yo are less likely to hang a toe walking around and throwing yourself off the shot. Aerial follows are a craft which needs constant practice or you lose it. Go to your local footy practice onto the oval and try follow the ball as close-in as you can.

If the aircraft is low, leave plenty of upper sky in the shot for it to lurch up into so you don't have it go out of frame before you can react. Sometimes these positions are best left wide as you then have the ground better framed in the shot. Give the aircraft plenty of nose room. As it approaches the end of the display box for a course reversal, let it stray towards the approached frame edge to leave yourself reaction room to hold the frame nd give it noseroom on the reverse direction.

When it is high and climbing at about 45 degrees it is probably going to come back down along that same 45 degree line unless it executes a ronchevek or avalanche, a sort of forwards tumble. Because it will slowdown during this figure, you will likely keep it in frame if you are ambushed.

When the aircraft is high and likely to come down again, allow the top frame edge to become a little crowded so the aircraft seems to bounce off an invisible barrier about 1/8th of the screen depth inside the top frame. Your follow will seem more natural.

Set your tripod head pivot point at about shoulder height as if shoulder-mounted and position the camera so that you do not have to crane on your toes to look into the eyepiece. You will have to learn to bend at the knees to get under the viewfinder the higher you tilt. Learn to use both eyes so you can re-aquire with your left if you lose the shot and know where the frame will be on the subject. I sometimes use two cams on the tripod harmonised to infinity parallax, one wide and zooming in to aquire, then transition to the other for the zoom-in to close-up and follow.

The vision from the wide camera will suck as it will be framed wrong compositionally once you transition to the camera with the long lens view. Therefore just use a cheap camera with a large viewscreen for your targeting camera. You will need a deep hood for the LCD.

The best motion for overhead follows for me is to use two tilt handles, one facing forwards and upwards on the left so my lens hand is close to the lens and already referenced to the controls by resting on the handle. The rear handle is on the right and counter-intuitively is bent upwards and outwards. The right handgrip for this is best palm-upwards, fingers high, with end of handle in lower-outer-centre of plam towards wrist, so you can switch to overhand if the tripod gets away. Having the palm of the right hand on the very end of the handle is also very helpful as it allows an instant swtich to overhand, fingers facing backwards when you have to knee-bend and stoop for a very steep overhead.

With steep overhead follows, the pan and tilt functions interact to cause the pans to become dutched in their nature as viewed. You will have to walk right around your tripod to achieve a successful follow of a high subject. When your subject is more than about 60degrees overhead, decide either to gracefully allow the aircraft to exit the frame or commit to your pan follow as your tilt will become impossible to control and the sudden necessary transition to the pan movement will be equally impossible to control and you will lose the shot.

Use your entire body and a rocking horse motion using force from both hands across the centre pivot point. You need the tilt and pans forces to be equal across the tripod head or you will pull it over when fighting the friction. You will need to set light to moderate friction for smooth follows. You will need to learn to walk around the tripod in both directions and try to avoid side-shuffling for you will catch the tripod leg. Lowerbody suppleness and knee bends are helpful in this adventure.

Because you ideally set the sticks fairly narrow so you can walk around, it is also ideal to hammer a solid tiedown peg into the ground under centre and tie the centre of the tripod firmly down with a truckie's tension knot or a tent rope tensioner - not the sliding spring type for those are useless. The best tripod head I found was an old black Miller without cam counterbalance. Drag then remains a constant, not a changing force. The old Millers can be a bit too draggy.

Lenses. I think you need a 50mm - 500mm zoom or something near to it. A 200mm will be adequate but if you want to get in close for aerobatic torque rolls with all the smoke, the tailslide and forward flip, you will need to 500mm to pick up the detail.

The Sigma f4-f6.3 I use on a 2/3" camera is a bit of a handful and perhaps a bit obsessive in the getting in close quest. On the RED,Scarlet or Epic, its view will not be as close-in at full zoom. when shooting a 35mm frame on a grounglass adaptor, I was putting a doubler on this lens to get in close enough wide the wider frame format.


The Sigma as you will observe in the clips below, goes visibly darker at the long end. The Canon may be constant aperture but I don't know. You need practice with the Sigma it as it will self-zoom to wide on steep tilts because of the weight of the extending section. Canons are better and sharper at the far end but may be out of your budget to rent. You need to ride both the focus and zoom controls with separate fingers if you are onto something close.

Try to get hold of copies of the aerobatic figures to be flown by the display pilots and learn them or have an assistant prompt you from the copy.


Look at the site map or look at the place on Google Earth to see where the suin is going to be. It is no fun trying to aquire and hold an aircraft against the sun. Conversely, smoke trails in a wide shot towards the sunset are as cool as beauty shot as can be this side of fashion models.

These clips are far from perfection but an example of what you will be up against.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txNrThVCu44
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVHX0kJxGjU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh-Aazbr1f0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6UvcQUKwSE



Don't forget the people. Get your reaction shots, human beauty and cute shots, family groups, weird clothing outfits etc., because distant aircraft in wide shots where you have no close-in cutaway can be as visually inspiring as blowflies on a far opposite window. Be polite to your bystanders. I have found people at airshows to be pretty good.


Enjoy. I hope I have not scared you off.

 

[Brett Harrison]

Robert, just got back to the real world and found your post from this morning, I've been around town getting things and haven't had time to check. Thank you for your big post, evidently awesome post, I am printing it out now and will read it carefully tomorrow morning in the car on the way! Let's see how I go with it. Now, I must sleep.

 

[Antony M]

Just a few comments...

What an amazingly helpful and detailed answer. One of the best posts I have read on RedUser for a long time.

 

[Robert Hart]

Brett. I have just finished adding and correcting so take another look for the corrected version.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

What an amazingly helpful and detailed answer. One of the best posts I have read on RedUser for a long time.

And that is the true spirit of why I spend as much time in this community, we should all be this way with less bitching and putting down others that do dedicate freely their precious time ot help others and share their dreams and victories of life in this Industry from which every one can learn a thing or two.


Here is to a Better and Better Reduser community were eventually there will be so little noise and so much great info that we'll stand out in the web and in real life...

 

[Robert Hart]

Anthony.


Bob Grimstead, the Fournier RF4D pilot performs at the UK and European airshows as part of the Redhawks duo during the northern summers. His airbase is in Sussex on a farm property. His Youtube channel name is FournierBob.


For anyone US-based on the west coast, there is a young up-and-comer Sam Mason, who has flown from childhood, whose flightcraft is as finely developed already as that of a maker of watches in his best years. He performs at some of the airshows over there and is as good a role model for youth aspiration as can be.