Pic(k) of the week 37: TWISTER AEROBATICS TEAM - SUNSET AIRSHOW SANICOLE

Last Friday, I attended the sunset airshow at Sanicole, Belgium; well it should have been called "the evening" airshow as the sun was 100% absent. The rainy weather together with very low light, made it challenging to say the least! It was likely one of the most difficult airshow conditions I ever shot in.

It was the 40th airshow at Sanicole, Belgium's only remaining civil airshow! Beside the Friday night airshow, there was also a full day airshow on Sunday; luckily for the organisers with much better weather! 

Photographing propellor aircraft, one needs to shoot at the shutter speed of maximum 1/200s, in order not to freeze the prop and have some prop blur. As I was shooting with my Fujifilm XF100-400 f4.5-f5.6 lens and the 1.4 Teleconverter attached at maximum focal length, my minimum aperture was f8; needing an ISO of 6400; not ideal but manageable on the X-T2.

It was definitively one of the conditions where a wider aperture lens like a 400mm f4 would have come in handy...

The resulting image below of the Twister Aerobatic Team is still pretty pleasing; the team consists of two Silence Twisters, flying a graceful display just at sunset, using smoke and pyrotechnics. 


Image details:
  • Fujifilm X-T2 with the XF100-400 and 1.4TC
  • ISO 6400, f8, 560mm
  • RAW development in Lightroom CC
  • Nik ColorEfex Pro 4 for optimal contrast
  • Nik Dfine for noise reduction
More images of the Sanicole sunset airshow on September 08, 2017 can be found here.

Make sure to check out the image of a Belgian Air Force F-16 here, flown by demo pilot GIZMO; an award winning display pilot which finishing his 3 year display tour soon. The F-16 can be shooting some flare; these are not pyrotechnics, by flares used to confuse missiles being shot at the aircraft.


Remember: "When fears are grounded, dreams take flight"


BJORN


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