Whoever said the best things in life are free may not have been specifically referring to watching the Blue Angels perform at the Dayton Airshow from a nearby parking lot, but we got a good show, nevertheless. The planes roared by several times as they made their turns back to the airfield. Whether they were flying single or in formation, they were a marvel of power and precision.

I used the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II, as I didn’t have the Tamron 150-600mm at the time. The lens performed well, and I was happily able to lock focus while tracking the planes, even as fast as they were moving by.

I chose to overexpose the meter by two stops because the sky was much brighter than the planes. With an ISO of 200 and the aperture at f/2.8, this gave me a shutter speed of 1/5000 second. This more than allowed me to freeze the movement of the planes thundering close by at hundreds of miles per hour.

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Most of the time I needed the full 200mm of focal length to fill the frame as much as possible with the planes.

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However, sometimes the planes came so close, I found myself zooming out rapidly as I panned the camera across the frame to try to keep the whole formation intact.

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I liked how they flew by us in different configurations, and we were able to admire the planes from different angles.

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This plane, flown by Lt. Mark Tedrow, was the most frequent to fly out in our direction. He made a last farewell pass with his landing gear deployed. If you click on this crop of the full image, you can his name painted under the cockpit.

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As thrilling as the Blue Angels were to see from a distance, I imagine that the people attending the Dayton Airshow got to see an even more spectacular performance. To watch the pilots fly in such close proximity was somewhat anxiety-provoking, but amazing to watch.

I’m already looking forward to next year’s show, maybe with the Tamron 150-600mm!