First time at SF Fleet Week

My first time at any Fleet Week event. Was pretty excited for it especially after seeing some of the photos a friend was able to take on a prior year. I knew my Canon 70-200 would be too short so I made a reservation to rent the Canon 100-400 and was able to borrow a Sigma 1.4x extender. When I did the pick up for the lens I also bought a basic plate so that I could use my Arcatech quick release attached to my BlackRapid strap.

We got there a day early to watch and practice while the Blue Angels were practicing too. I was able to pickup their routine and certain patterns which allowed me to setup a couple shots. The crossing path shot was the trickiest because a tree would block the view of one of the plans till it was too late. From reviewing my shots I would say that getting shots of the planes in a blank blue background is really boring. I wanted SF in the background so it took more anticipation and planning out the shot.

Gear wise I noticed the combo created a lot of vignetting but the reach was perfect for 80% of what I wanted to do. Setting wise I kept it a shutter speed of 1/800 to 1/1000. I also had my drive on high speed burst and did a lot of spraying and praying. The Blue Angels were really fast especially when they did the cross path maneuver. Eventually I found out they would always cross at a certain spot. So I would have my body position where the cross point was directly in front of me and I would twist my upper body to track one of the planes. When my body was getting close to lining up straight again I would burst while tracking one of the planes. I found some success in this method.

Some additional thoughts

• With the way the lens hung off the BlackRapid, it drove either the adjustment bolt or the quick release into the side of my hip which got sore quick
• Leave the tripod at home, I brought it up to SF but decided not to use it. The planes fly in all sorts of different direction, the tripod would be in the way. At time I would remove the strap from the lens so I had greater mobility. Just make sure you don't let go of the camera till you reattached the strap to the camera.