Air Show London 2018 is over and despite the weather, it was a great day out seeing planes and aerobatics and taking photos. Now I've got over 1800 images, a bunch of video footage and 3 rolls of film to sift through! Hang on - film? In 2018? Seriously? Well, let me back-up a bit and start from the beginning.
Two years ago I went to the air show and I rented the XF100-400mm lens for the weekend. This is a great lens and was perfect for the job. But since then, my gear has grown and I now have the awesome work-horse XF50-140 F2.8. 140mm is a bit short for getting decent close-ups of flying planes, so I needed more reach. I got Fuji's 2X tele-converter. I love macro work and since the XF80m can also take advantage of this modifier, it seems like a sound purchase. Especially since it's a quarter of the price of the 100-400!
So armed with my new tele-converter, I now effectively have a 100-280mm F5.6 which is adequate on the crop-sensor of the X-T1. Sure it doesn't have the reach of the 400, but looking at the EXIF data on my photos from the previous show, most of the focal-lengths were around the 300mm mark, so now I was good to go for the flying displays. For the static aircraft, the trusty XF10-24 F4 is perfect for some super-wide images.
I've been wanting to experiment with video for a while and wanted to do something a bit different from the last air show. So I took my GoPro along. My plan was to get some footage of walking around the planes on the apron. Wasn't expecting much use for the aerobatic displays, but I did try capture some video of the Snowbirds formation flying.
So why the film? I enjoy doing some old-school film photography every now and then. The pace is different. It's slower, more considered. You're restricted to 36 shots on a roll, so you can't just snap away and cull later. You have to consider your composition more carefully and only squeeze the trigger when you're completely happy with it. And using film would be different to what I did before.
And that's the key. If you want to improve, you need to keep doing new and different things - get out of the comfort zone and experiment. And most of all - have fun.
Now it's time to go back to processing all those images. In the meantime, here are a handful of moody images from the static displays at dawn:
