Does anyone use Manual Focus lenses for Aircraft/Airshows?

[cambsno]

Recently sold my lovely 70-200VR and took a 70-300VR in p/x. Plan was to use that at airshows as its a longer length and the 70-200 was just not getting used enough. Its a good lens, but compared to the 70-200, my 24-70 and my prime it will always be slightly lacking.

Got a mint MF lens off ebay, the nikon 300mm prime f/4.5. Gave it a quick test last night and appears to be sharper as you would expect with a prime. However I noticed I was much more steady using the 70-300 (and VR helps). Biggest question is the MF. I guess that I will have it sent to infinity most of the time as the aircraft are quite a distance away so focussing should not be an issue???

Does anyone else shoot MF lenses for this and how do you get on?

 

[pete.rush]

Well people must have once upon a time

Yes you can use manual lenses, it was what photographers were using before we were blessed with autofocus. So using manual focusing, you pre focus on a point that the subject will move through – and shooting at that point. You need to get your timing just right but you can get some really great shots – as long as the subject always moves through that pre focus area., but if the track of the subject differs, thats when manual focus can become a real challenge, but perhaps a very good ability to master

For Motorsport its achievable, but for aviation photography, that's more difficult because the distance between you and the subject isn't constant, so pre focusing becomes very much more a challenge and if the speed of the subject is great, probably a small % of success.

I was big into lowfly photography (haven't had much opportunity recently), but met this so called pro, spot metered, manual focused on 600mph jet shooting through the Welsh hills, said it was easy, didn't see 1 decent shot from him all day, so its not easy if there's some variation in the distance between you and the subject.

Takes practice

 

[cambsno]

Cheers Peter. I am guessing that it will always be at infinity so no need to focus if that makes sense! Guess I will have to give it a try.

 

[Bernie174]

I started photography just before the advent of auto focus, so had about 6 months of manual. I have to say in that time, I got, erm nowt aviation wise in focus.
Now that could be cause I have no hand eye co ordination, or I was just crap at it, or maybe I needed a lot more practice.
I doubt that helps you much. So my only advice is that leaving it on infinity didn't work.