Camera Settings/Spots to shoot

[tajmahal250]

Sorry for all the questions, but.....I'm planning on going out to Luke to try and catch some afterburner shots at dusk/night. What are the best camera settings to get shots like that? And, is there a particular spot that is better than another? I've tried to do it before, and I wasn't really able to, since I didn't realize how little of a time that the jets are actually in afterburner. Thanks again....

[Anna M. Wood]

Hard to say what the best settings are?  They change as you lose light.   I usually start in Shutter Priority, 100 iso and adjust Aperture.  Assuming a bit more light when starting out the evening.  Then chase the shutter, aperture and iso as is gets dark.

I usually will end up wide open aperture, 1/30 sec and in the range of 6400 iso when shooting after sunset at Sky Harbor.

Check out some of our Flickr accounts for settings we use with the dusk images we have posted.  Harvey has a bunch of good after burner images.  I have a few on my account in my Night Aviation album on Flickr.  Both Harvey and I have our EXIF data visible for the images.

Experiment, experiment, experiment.  Takes quite of bit of practice to get the panning muscles in sync and to learn what your camera can do with low light shots.