Peter.D.Evans wrote:
Hi all,

Having unsuccessfully tried to use my Panasonic FZ7 and its appalling
shutter lag especially when taking pictures of the flying, I've bitten the
bullet purchased a Nikon D80 body. I would welcome recommendations for lens
that will enable me to make the most of this camera for taking good clear
images of aircraft on display.

Cheers in advance,

Pete


Some points:

Shutter lag will kill you, so if you can do it buy a digital camera with
the least possible lag and shoot single frames after carefully leading
and framing the target;

Closer is always better for individual aircraft; back in the days when I
took a lot of air to air photos, I used a Nikon F body hooked to a 500mm
Nikkor Mirror lens. Those lenses are out there if you can find one.
They were the sharpest of the Maksutov-theory construction; the 1000 and
the 2000 mm Nikkor lenses could only be used from a tripod. Remember
that you don't always need the latest refractor type lens (as opposed to
the reflector style of the Maksutov-Theory lenses) and you don't need
Zoom lenses if you constrain your picture taking to specific subjects
and poses at one time. Zoom lenses are inherently less "sharp" than
apocromatic lenses, which are less than acromatic, which are less than
non-stabilized mirror lenses. The ideal, of course, would be a Leitz
Apocromatic 1000 f2 lens hooked to an Alpa body with motor drive,
shooting Old Kodachrome ASA 25. There was a series of those lenses
specially made for the CIA back in the 1960's which had a
gyro-stabilizer device which circled the lens. It was so rock steady
when it was speeded up to to working revolutions (or whatever gyoscopic
stabilizers do) that it was difficult to pan a moving target. I've used
that lens on some surveillances with Roxal-X Pan film (ASA 1200) pushed
to ASA 12,000 in a hot developer bath and single-chromatic lamp flashing
during development, that worked pretty good. I remember one timje in a
night club in Okinawa where the system actually caught the mid-air spurt
of a certain bodily fluid as the young lady of the night furiously
massaged a certain member of the SUBJECT'S body, grappling it into
submission... I forget what happened to the SUBJECT but that photo was
famous in the annals of military intelligence back in the 1960's.

OK, another point, use color film or settings of the highest possible
speed, that you can without sacrificing grain and enlargement. Remember
that the closer you can get to the subject by using a telephoto lens,
the less you have to crop. This wasn't a problem back when I used a
Fairchild K-series hand held 70mm camera with the ten inch lens. I
could actually see the extended middle finger of the Soviet Bear tail
gunners as I homed in on the new tail gun radar antennas.

There are some marvelous pictures here taken by real experts --
profession air show photographers -- I am sure they can offer better
advice than can I. Anyway, good luck.

Cheers,

Dave