Scott Diussa Photography
Scott Diussa Photography
Reno Air Races - pRS - Wrap Up
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Well, we had a great and successful time at the Reno Air Races Pylon Racing School over the last few days. I was really happy to have Bill Fortney working with me as well as Moose Peterson giving us some great help as well. Everyone we met was very friendly and very talented at what they do. It really is amazing how hard this stuff is to shoot and when you finally get something that is really sharp it’s very exciting. Hand-holding very large lenses with fast moving subjects is hard enough but when they are propeller driven aircraft the shutter speed of the camera is everything. So, when you would normally want to use a very fast shutter speed to stop the motion of the subject you need to actually use what would be considered a very slow shutter speed. Most of the prop aircraft needed shutter speeds of 1/250 of a second or so instead of something very fast like1/1000 of a second or higher. This makes panning, or moving with the subject, a lot more difficult.
This is an example of 1/500 of a second shutter speed. Some would say that this is too fast and the propeller should be blurred even more... it’s just personal preference but I have a feeling that I just up-ed the shutter speed so I could actually get something sharp!
D3 w/ 400mm 2.8VR and TC-14E 1.4x teleconverter. This is what I was using on my second trip out to the pylons. This one is heavy and will give a heck of a workout!
My cameras and lenses of choice were the D3 with the 500mm VR and the D300 with the 70-300mm VR lens. Swapping back and forth between these two setups was easy and very versatile.
These two last images were taken with the new Nikon Coolpix P80 compact digital camera. It’s a great camera to just keep with you at all times and takes great pictures.
We’re looking forward to visiting Reno again in September.
Until next time...