Fuji Pushing the envelope with the Fuji X-T1

Lightmancer

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Location
Sunny Frimley
Name
Bill Palmer
I took my X-T1 to the Wings and Wheels event at Dunsfold Park this year. I used to do a lot of airshow photography back when I were a lad, but apart from a dabble last year, this is the first time I have seriously done so for a few years. Although I took the new 18-135, the vast majority of my shots were with the 55-200. I shot 1350 exposures, split over 3 SD cards. Using the battery grip (two batteries) I was surprised that it took just over 1000 shots to deplete the first battery. I was less surprised to find that once I had filled the two Sandisk Extreme Plus cards that I had which write at 80mb/s I really struggled when I had to switch to an older 30mb/s card. I was hitting the buffer time after time. I was incidentally shooting raw+jpg with the drive set to CL and firing bursts of 3 or 4 at a time (after that it is better to reframe, I find, rather than try and follow focus a fast jet any real distance...)

Anyway, here are some results. There is a bit of mushyness in some, particularly, frustratingly, the Vulcan shots but for the most part the X-T1 put in a good performance. It's partly the user, anyway, for I tend to not use the highest shutter speeds, particularly with prop-driven aircraft, in order to get some sense of movement.. 300mm equivalent is a good focal length for this type of show, although I admit that some of these are crops to make the composition tighter. Anyway, here we are:

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Wings and Wheels Dunsfold August 2014 X-T1 Apache 5 par Lightmancer, on ipernity

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Wings and Wheels Dunsfold August 2014 X-T1 Vulcan 5 par Lightmancer, on ipernity

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Wings and Wheels Dunsfold August 2014 X-T1 Vulcan Gnats 2 par Lightmancer, on ipernity

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Wings and Wheels Dunsfold August 2014 X-T1 Spitfire Mk IXB Mustang P51D 6 par Lightmancer, on ipernity

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Wings and Wheels Dunsfold August 2014 X-T1 Stunt 2 par Lightmancer, on ipernity

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Wings and Wheels Dunsfold August 2014 X-T1 Fokker Triplanes 1 par Lightmancer, on ipernity

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Wings and Wheels Dunsfold August 2014 X-T1 Canberra Hunter 3 par Lightmancer, on ipernity

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Wings and Wheels Dunsfold August 2014 X-T1 Lancasters 5 100% crop par Lightmancer, on ipernity
 
That's a great set, and useful information about 300mm equiv. being the optimum focal length for these events..

Unfortunately, the year we went to Wings and Wheels, both the Red Arrows and the Vulcan were late cancellations, and they were the two main reasons we went.

It looks like you picked a better year.

-R
 
Some great stuff. It obviously was good enough to get some fine shots. Only you know how the shooting experience, level of frustration (or lack of it), and how many potentially fine shots ended up missed. But the results that worked, worked well!

-Ray
 
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