Royal Air Force Red Arrows Demonstration Team

Breaking Vapor

USAF F35A Lightning II

Flown by Captain Andrew "Dojo" Olson

Canon 7D

Canon 100-400mm lens @ 400mm

ISO 500

F13

1/1000th of a second

2019 Oregon Airshow

USAF F-35A Lightning II flown by Captain Andrew "Dojo" Olson. 2019 Oregon Airshow.

F35 Lightning engaging Afterburner

2019 Oregon Airshow

Canon EOS 7D

Canon 100-400mm F4L @ 310mm

ISO 500

F13

1/1000 of a second

When shooting fast action, especially jet aircraft, its important to really crank up the shutter speed in order to freeze the action. For this shot, I had my camera in manual mode with the above settings. The only thing I did differently than usual was to set my camera to automatic ISO. This works out because the camera is allowed to choose the best ISO (How sensitive the camera is to light) to work with the other settings that I set the camera to. However, I should have limited the cameras ISO limit to prevent the ISO from getting too high. When the ISO is too high, than digital noise starts to become a factor, particularly with crop factor cameras such as the Canon 7D.

YAK 110 flown by Jeff Boerboon

"YAK 110" aircraft at the Oregon Airshow. Shot with a Canon 7D using the Canon 100-400mm lens. ISO 100, 1/160th of a second. Aperture of F13. Lens zoomed all the way out to 400mm. Normally when shooting fast action you want to have the shutter speed as fast as you can. However, when shooting propeller aircraft, you want to actually slow down and pan the shot with your camera. The panning motion keeps the image shot while the slow shutter speed allows motion to be shown in the propellers of the aircraft. Showing the motion of the props is important as freezing the motion would look unnatural and weird.