It’s not often you see airshows take place in the evening and into the night. Having been to many of them over the years and melted in the summer midday heat, it was nice to sit in the cooling air and occasional shower for a change. Duxford Flying Evening was a good opportunity to experience an airshow in a slightly different way, and naturally also a good opportunity to get some use out of my super telephoto lenses. On the day I took the RF 600mm f/11, RF 800mm f11 and the RF 100-500mm along with my Canon EOS R5.
Of course, taking photos at the event was always going to be tricky, firstly I’m out of practice, the last one I went to was about 3 years ago, and that was the first one for probably 10 years before that. Secondly, it’s an evening show, so light was going to be problem. I wasn’t too concerned about the RF 100-500mm lens, coupled with the Canon EOS R5 it does a good job, even if I have to bump up the ISO to a high-ish level. I was more concerned about the 600mm and 800mm – at f11 there was no question that I would need a high ISO to get a decent shutter speed, even at the beginning, and there was also no question at some point they would become impractical. But hey, that’s all part of the fun.
A lot of the shots in the early part of the display were a mix between sunshine and overcast skies with a mix of rain showers in between. As the light faded, we got a nice golden sunset, personally I prefer a nice orange and pink sunset but in this case you get what you’re given, it still made for a really nice backdrop to watch the action.
As the sun set fully and we entered the blue hour, the moon started to rise from the horizon, it wasn’t a full moon, but even so it was incredible watching planes like the Fokker DR-1 fly into the moonlight.
Even the planes sitting on the tarmac and grass next to the runway made for a good photo opportunity.
Finally, to end the evening we were treated to a plane based pyrotechnic display. I’ve seen this before at the Bournemouth Air Show, but it’s always enjoyable to see glider-based fireworks, if not a bit weird that you dont hear the normal loud bangs of the fireworks as you normally would.
As far as airshows go, the Duxford Flying Evening was something different, and it made for a different challenge trying to get these fast-moving planes sharp with ever dwindling shutter speeds. Maybe we’ll go back to a future one, my only criticism was that it was quite short in comparison to other airshows.
Posted in: Photography