Aviation F-35 at CIAS 2025

[miuzi]

Question for anyone who might care to answer: I'm shooting these in raw and then processing in Lightroom. Because of my (relatively) low budget setup of the RF100-400mm paired with the 2x extender, at 800mm my wide-open aperture is f/16. Combine that with the faster shutter speeds I need to freeze a jet travelling at like 600kph and it's basically unavoidable that I'm shooting at higher ISOs than I'd prefer. These were all at 1250 or 1600. So the images, especially if I crop a bit, are a little noisy. I've been running them through Lightroom's AI denoise, which I generally find works quite well, but I'm concerned that maybe I'm overdoing it and the plane's surfaces look too smooth, like a little buttery smooth? Maybe an F-35 is just really slippery smooth though - I've never been close to one on static display. Thoughts? My eyeballs are just not locking in on the sweet spot of enough noise to look real but not so much that it looks worse than it needs to. Overall, though, I'm really happy with the airshow images I've gotten recently, and will be sharing more soon.

• Join to view EXIF data.

• Join to view EXIF data.

• Join to view EXIF data.

• Join to view EXIF data.

 

[esheato]

I shoot a lot of airshows and think these are fine. I set my rig (R6II and adapted EF 100-400 II) with shutter priority around 1/2000 and let everything else fall where it wants...which on a bright sunny summer day is usually around ISO 160.

Yes, these shots are smooth, but the jets are sleek too. I'd certainly be proud of them. The glow on the belly of the first shot is sublime. Nice capture. I attended Andrews Airshow yesterday and it was a bit of a let down, and this is coming from a USAF veteran. I'll be posting some probably next week.

 

[miuzi]

I shoot a lot of airshows and think these are fine. I set my rig (R6II and adapted EF 100-400 II) with shutter priority around 1/2000 and let everything else fall where it wants...which on a bright sunny summer day is usually around ISO 160.

Yes, these shots are smooth, but the jets are sleek too. I'd certainly be proud of them. The glow on the belly of the first shot is sublime. Nice capture. I attended Andrews Airshow yesterday and it was a bit of a let down, and this is coming from a USAF veteran. I'll be posting some probably next week.

Oh yeah, I've seen your images, and they're wonderful. Thank you for the feedback!