Great stuff Muflon!!

Do not worry about people telling you about 1/60th handheld, they must have image stabalistation/ vibration reduction as i would be very very suprised if someone can hold a good airshow lens steady.

Have you actually tried yet? You can do it too, just practise.

Taken at 1/100th:
http://skyraider3d.military-meshes.com/skyraider/photos/aircraft/ow050807_28.jpg
crop: http://skyraider3d.military-meshes.com/skyraider/photos/aircraft/ow050807_01.jpg

Taken at 1/60th:
http://skyraider3d.military-meshes.com/skyraider/photos/aircraft/fl2005_20.jpg

Taken at 1/40th:
http://skyraider3d.military-meshes.com/skyraider/photos/aircraft/ow050820_01.jpg

Taken at 1/30th:
http://skyraider3d.military-meshes.com/skyraider/photos/aircraft/dx050910_01.jpg

Taken at 1/20th:
http://skyraider3d.military-meshes.com/skyraider/photos/aircraft/ow050924_01.jpg

All taken with the crappy ultra-light Canon 100-300 without image stabilizer.

The last shot, taken at a silly 1/20th of a second, gets fuzzy at the nose and tail ends. I believe this is because of perspective distortion, rather than faulty panning. The wing is also fuzzy as it vibrates because of the landing shock. Nothing you can do about that at this sort of speed. The cockpit area is sharp, which is what counts most.

Muflon is right… machine gun away and you have a good chance of getting a sharp one amongst many crap ones 😀

IS does help a bit with horizontal pans (see http://skyraider3d.military-meshes.com/skyraider/photos/aircraft/ow060604.htm for some examples – Seafire, Piper, Bücker) but I haven’t noticed too much difference with non-horizontal airshow pics. I usually keep it on though, as it helps in getting head-on shots more stable. In overhead passes however you tend to fight against it, no matter what IS mode you use (“static” or “panning”).

When panning, stand parallel from the flight path – do NOT face the plane, you can’t pan this way. If it’s a jet and you expect it to pull up with full afterburner, even face away a bit from the plane. Start panning over your shoulder. When the action happens you’ll already be panning with it and facing it for optimal shooting comfort.

PS. I personally found the best compromise between a good prop blur and chances of getting a sharp picture to be around 1/250th of a second. For helicopters (and tilt rotors) you need to go down to 1/125th or else the main rotor freezes too much. But if your panning is flawed, even 1/1000th of a second won’t save you 🙂 In general I think 1 in 4 or 5 pics I make is of acceptable sharpness, and only 1 in 10 is really good. Funnily enough this seems to be totally irrelevant to shutterspeed, as I get the same success rates at 1/30th of a second 🙂 But then again I use such low shutterspeeds usually only for landing/take-off shots, when the path of the plane is straight and predictable.