| A few weeks ago I went with my friends to see an | | | | As time passed my hands got tired from holding the |
| air show. The schedule was packed with acrobatics | | | | camera and my stable grip was not as stable |
| and many types of planes. The highlight of the show | | | | anymore. Unfortunately I did not bring a tripod - and |
| was the blue angles with their jets doing dangerous | | | | probably I would have not used it even if I had it since |
| routines. I took my camera hoping to capture some | | | | it is hard to track airplanes flying above using one |
| good digital memories of that show. | | | | especially when you are with thousands of people |
| I took my digital SLR camera to the air show. I put it in | | | | walking around you. When I looked at the photos that |
| my special camera bag alongside an extra battery | | | | evening I saw the results of my tired grip - the later |
| and lenses. I used an eight mega pixels DSLR with a | | | | digital photos were not as sharp and steady as the |
| 100-300mm zoon lenses. | | | | earlier ones. |
| I decided to shoot as many photos as I could knowing | | | | When I saw the results of my work my reaction was |
| from my experience that in such cases the rule of big | | | | to go and get those fancy lenses with an image |
| numbers works very well - shoot as many photos as | | | | stabilizer built-in them. There are two types of image |
| you can and you might be able to find a few photos | | | | stabilizer one that moves the sensor and one that |
| which are really unique. So when the airplanes started | | | | actually uses gyroscopes in the lens to move a floating |
| to fly around I pointed my camera at them and from | | | | optical element that compensates for shakings. The |
| that point on I watched most of the air show through | | | | latter is more expensive and provides better results. I |
| my camera's viewfinder. | | | | saw some people walking around with the Canon |
| I set my camera to automatic continuous focus. I had | | | | image stabilizing zoom lens I am not sure how |
| my finger holding the shutter button half way down | | | | effective it was for them but it sure did look |
| most of the time while I am moving the camera to | | | | impressive. |
| track those fast flying airplanes. I could hear the | | | | There are also drawbacks to using image stabilizers |
| camera's motors working hard moving the optical | | | | and actually some of these drawbacks are very |
| components in the lens back and forth to keep the | | | | relevant to my air show photo shooting. Moving the |
| focus right. I also set the camera to burst mode so | | | | camera erratically to track an acrobatic airplane can |
| whenever I decided the composition was worth | | | | confuse the image stabilizer that can detect that |
| shooting a photo it actually shot a fast sequence of | | | | movement as being unwanted shakings and try to |
| four photos. The idea behind that was first to get | | | | compensate for it. If I had an image stabilizer I would |
| more photos to choose from - with fast flying planes | | | | have had to use different practices when shooting my |
| these four photos were really different from each | | | | photos like trying to pan the camera on one axis and |
| other - and second to maybe be able to capture | | | | at a more or less constant speed. |
| some motion in a sequence of photos. | | | | |