RAF Fairford - Royal International Air Tattoo

[Ian]

A small selection from the 500 or so photos I took this weekend (of which 450+ will be going straight in the bin!).

#1 - ??.

#2 - Solitary Red Arrow.

#3 - The 'big attraction' Vulcan.

#4 - Vulcan again.

200mm (320mm at 1.6x) definitely isn't long enough for the type of shots I was after and tbh I'm not really interested that much in the planes, hence the lack of static shots, but some of the aerial displays were impressive and it's always good to keep in touch with mates, which is why I was there.

I drove down from Manchester and picked up a few mates in Stourport around 11pm, then after a while we headed off to Fairford, arriving at 3am. Three of us tried to sleep in the Clio, unsurprisingly I gave up at 5:30am and spent most of the day sleep-walking.

Ian

 

[Feirny]

1st is a Eurofighter Typhoon.

And dude, they are superb. You never fail to impress me, seriously good work.

 

[fezsi]

Lovely pictures and its fantastic to see the vulcan back in the skies!

 

[Fletcher]

Great pics.

 

[5parky]

Seriously impressive shots. Amazing actually!

 

[Ian]

Thanks very much everyone.

1st is a Eurofighter Typhoon.

And dude, they are superb. You never fail to impress me, seriously good work.

Ah cheers bud.. I'm useless with the names!

Lovely pictures and its fantastic to see the vulcan back in the skies!

My mate is obsessed with the damn thing, lol; got to admit it is an impressive sight though. The weather was appalling, so it very nearly didn't go up.


If I were to go again I'd make sure I got front row and try and get myself a longer lens too. There were some Belgians in front of me and apparently they post their photos on a forum. I can't see their stuff yet, but there are others here. Shows what you can get with a bigger zoom.

 

[dunganick]

Stunning mate, working around equipment shortcomings is just another part of photography, you certainly did that well here

Top photos, the first one is epic.

 

[Gaz.]

f**k me Ian those are brilliant. I can't believe how quickly you've improved since the start of the year, whereas I feel I've got worse since beginning my 52.

 

[Revels]

Your photography is improving massively mate.

I love the one of the red arrow!

 

[swirly182]

Looks like you're in a plane above, taking a photo of the Vulcan

 

[Stuart.Atkinson]

Cracking shots mate! have you got a full size versino i could have a look at?
What setup did u use?

 

[ukaskew]

Properly, properly awesome photographs. Seriously impressed. The two Vulcan shots are immense.

Shorter focal lengths usually force you to be more creative with events like this, you've nailed it perfectly. Forget a mega-long 600mm 2.8 or something (if you have several grand spare!), your pics would just look like 1000s of others.

 

[LaurenF]

Amazing photos!!

 

[Paul_G]

Cracking shots Ian, really love the Vulcan, plus the Typhoon is great too. Would have love to be there but it clashed with the hol. Next year!

 

[Henry]

don't know anything about photography, but the Typhoon and the colour Vulcan pictures look stunning. i guess there'll have been lots of people there who do, but can you sell images like that?

funnily enough, i saw a Vulcan circling Filton earlier this afternoon - same plane?

 

[f0xy]

great shots, what extender were you using?

 

[ukaskew]

funnily enough, i saw a Vulcan circling Filton earlier this afternoon - same plane?

There is only one flying, so yes

 

[Henry]

There is only one flying, so yes

ah, right. in that case, i've spotted it twice as i chanced seeing it flying over Lyneham last summer as well!

 

[Feirny]

It was flying over Leicester when I was traveling back from FCS too.

 

[Andy.]

Stunning shots. The red arrow one is fantastic!

 

[Ian]

Seems I was a victim of the vicious forum limits again , sorry for not replying. In answer to the people that I haven't already replied to via PM..

Stuart: I was using a Canon 450d coupled with the Canon EF 70-200mm F/4L. I'll see what I can do for larger versions, but at the moment they only exist as 800px/200kb images to allow me to upload more within the Flickr limits. One or two are big crops as well, so they won't be as good as I'd like.

Chris: Yeah I know exactly what you mean pal, I think the ideal lens would probably be the Canon 100-400mm, so I could have a combination of both types of shots; although as you've already alluded to, they aint cheap!

Paul: never thought to ask if anyone was going from on here, maybe meet up next year if we both end up going.

Thanks for the comments everyone and to Dan for replacing #2 after I messed up! I think Planetx's thread kinda puts this one into perspective as well, if anyone hasn't seen it.

 

[Josh220]

I took some and was going to post them up but I'm not so sure now because yours are brilliant!

Good work.

 

[Ian]

Cheers pal, you should post yours up though.. I've posted, what, three planes up? Hardly representative of the show really - I'd like to see your take on it too!