IWM Duxford Summer Airshow
Date: June 2nd 2024.
Event : IWM Duxford Summer Airshow
Location : IWM Duxford, Cambridgeshire, UK, CB22 4QR
The Duxford summer airshow is their first real airshow of the season, prior to this they’ve had a flying day, which is a much smaller event limited to about 5,000 people. On the Sunday when I attended they had sold approximately 21,000 tickets. The show takes place over the Saturday and Sunday, the first and second of June, 2024.
This summer airshow was billed as a commemoration for Day. The aircraft they presented were relevant to D Day and many of them had had additional paint work, the black and white invasion stripes, added to their colour schemes. This meant that some of the usual Duxford, participants such as “Miss pick-me up”, the Catalina, were not taking part nor were the first world war aircraft which usually appear at a show Duxford event. A number of the aircraft flew in and flew out to other events at East Midlands, Shuttleworth and Torbay air shows which were on the same day and many of the aircraft were doing two or three of these on the same day.
The Saturday suffered from poor weather and high crosswinds, which meant some of the scheduled performances could not take place. Add to this the bad weather in Europe over the proceeding few days also meant that some of the aircraft due to participate had not been able to fly in from Europe. I attended on the Sunday where the weather forecast was for around 20°C and mainly sunshine all day. It was sunshine all day and it was probably considerably warmer than the 20°. This meant that we had a full day and weather was not a factor for the participating aircraft.
I have attended many Duxford events over the last few years, the major air shows and the majority of the flying days. So I have more pictures of Spitfires, hurricanes, Sally B the B-17, Mustangs and other assorted aircraft to fill up my computer already. So my objective was to look for something different, and this is either in the attitude of the aircraft, spotting whether undercarriage was up or down, Bombay open etcetera, but mainly, as these were predominantly propeller driven aircraft I would be trying to get the propeller blurred,. This is difficult as to get a blurred propeller and to get it in a full 360° blur means you’re shooting shutter speed of well under 100th of a second. This is a challenge as it means with long lenses, which we are all using at an airshow, in variably there is camera shake and hence the pictures look blurry. So you have to take a lot of pictures and concentrate on your panning technique the best you can with the hope that a few of them will be sharp. I do not use a tripod as I find it too restrictive when following the aircraft.
As just mentioned, the key challenge for proper aircraft is to have the propeller blurred. To do this requires a show slow shutter speed, which means you having a shutter speed of as close to 100 of a second,(this varies by aircraft type and their speed), as you can. This means you have to be very steady you have to be able to hold the lens, close up against your forehead holding 2/3 of the way down the lens with the other hand and twisting your body from the waist to effectively pan as smoothly as you can. This turns out to be relatively easy when the planes fly at a constant altitude, so something flying left to right or right to left 200 feet off the ground, you know where it’s going and therefore you can pan, with a level of comfort. The real challenges are the faster aircraft, the more manoeuverable aircraft, because they don’t fly flat very often they are twisting and turning and climbing and diving which means panning left right or right to left doesn’t work. You have to try and follow the aircraft in its parabolic curve. This is very difficult.
The second challenge at Duxford is generally the direction of the Sun and hence the quality of the light. The runway tends to be orientated north West to Southeast And the public are on the west side of the runway. The Sun is above and into your right for the early part of the afternoon not moving out of your field of view probably until about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, which means for many of the shots you are shooting against the light, where the aircraft is silhouetted or in shadow.
On the day they were a number of substitutions, but these were filled with replacements from collections based at Duxford. The weather was fine and sunny. The afternoon opened with a dive from the Royal Air Force parachute display team, the red Devils, this was spectacular and involved new moves which having seen them over the last two seasons, clearly had been introduced for this season. a great display followed closely by the French Air Force Raphael solo demonstration. Attractively painted in the colours of the Tricolor, this plane was exceedingly noisy great fun, fast and was welcome change to the plethora of propeller driven planes that were to follow. Following this was a collection of single aircraft Spifrires, Mustangs, the thunderbolt and various aerobic display teams. A Mitchell twin engine aircraft which had flown in from the Red Bull collection in Austria which was lovely to see, and also a DC6 the flagship of the Red Bull air collection. This was a four engine commercial liner, that predated the arrival of the jet airliners. These were all very well demonstrated probably the highlights of this stage being the Wing Walkers. The demonstration concluded at 5 o’clock with the arrival of the RAF red arrows, almost a full display, back up to 9 aircraft this year but Duxford is a little constrained in size, so other shows, with more space and less motorways around them will probably have a more comprehensive flight plan, however this was spectacular. I did make a mistake. I did switch cameras for the red arrow display and I hadn’t fully checked all of the settings on the second camera and for part of the display it was in single auto focus rather than continuous auto focus so probably 30 to 40% of the shots that I took of the red arrows I just had to throw away.
I came away with close to 3000 photographs of the of the day. A disproportionate number of these were of the red arrows, as to get the key points in the display where the planes were crossing over, I was shooting at 40 frames the second and holding the shuttle down for a couple of seconds while the aircraft shoot across each other, You can take 80 photographs without thinking about it.
Many of the photographs were blurred due to my consistent use of a slow shutter speed,( not for the Red Arrows or the Rafael), I think my success rate was probably no more than one in 10 being acceptably sharp.
I thought I had prepared everything, cameras and lenses cleaned batteries and memory cards all checked, accessories bags all packed the night before. Packed lunch couple bottles of water, hat, suncream on, always well planned. However, I didn’t take enough water, being a hot day, and I hadn’t checked the auto focus setting on the second camera. I must make a note to doublecheck again to forward this next time.
A very enjoyable day, a very long day to secure my space on the flight line, by the fence, so you’re not blocked by other people and other photographers, I was at the airfield sat down before 8 am.The red Devils dived at 1 pm, so a five hour wait for the display to start, the display finished about 5:30 pm , I packed up and left before six. So it’s a long day but very enjoyable and I got enough photographs to believe that it was worthwhile.