The conditions were nice to take some airplane pictures today. I am working on getting much better photos through a combination of equipment upgrades and technique improvement. On the equipment side, my relatively new 5D MkIII is quite a step ahead in the autofocus department. I have remarked on this before. From what I have seen of the new 7D MkII, it may have this improved capability as well.

So, technique wise, what did I do? The main thing I did was to start using AI servo mode. I had been concerned in the past that it wasn't fast enough to track things accurately, but I now believe that it is fast enough. One thing to keep in mind is that if you use the one shot setting, as soon as you depress the shutter, the focus is fixed and your subject(the airplane)is moving. I did a quick back of the envelope calculation that said in about a second the subject will be outside the depth of field (give or take, depending on assumptions). Another thing that I do now is use shutter priority and adjust ISO so that I get f8-f11, or thereabouts. Next change I am going to make is go to partial metering or spot metering.

So, now to today's photo. This is a 0.63 megapixel crop from the middle of a frame. If you click on original below you will see a 1:1 rendering of the cropped photo. I think it is pretty sharp. It represents 3% of the whole frame. That is pretty cool. I am easily amused.