We heard the noise of prop-driven airplanes quite often during the last few days and it was a reminder for me that the AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin is coming up soon. A short visit to the Dubuque Regional Airport this evening confirmed it. There were about 27 historical aircraft, most of the Texan T6’s, parked in front of the hangars on the other side of the airfield. As apparently they come to Dubuque every year a week before to practice for the air shows in Oshkosh. This is always a great opportunity to see them and to practice handholding and panning with a long lens and maybe come back home with some decent aviation photos.
As mentioned, the airplanes of interest were all parked and the day was obviously over for the pilots, but a minute after my arrival at the observation deck of the airport I heard a jet approaching the runway. Denver Air Connection is the only airline that serves Dubuque with commercial flights at the moment and the flight from Chicago was just about to arrive.
Any jet airplane, like this ERJ145, we can photograph with whatever shutter speed will tell the story. Of course, it’s still important to do some good panning, even with a fast shutter speed for the best sharpness of the photo. Here I used 1/3200s to freeze the jet and keep some details in the clouds on this mostly overcast day.
The prop-driven airplanes need a different approach to tell the story of movement and a slow shutter speed is desired. Most of the time I have shot these aircraft between 1/40s and 1/250s, depending how fast the prop is spinning. While the EMBRAER ERJ145 still taxied to the terminal, a much smaller private aircraft was about to take off and moved slowly to the runway. I quickly set the shutter speed to 1/100s and got this nice blur of the propeller with the low sun hitting it and making it stand out.