Flugtag Kuwait

FlugTag Kuwait
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

A Flugtag (German: flight day, airshow) is an event in which competitors attempt to fly in homemade flying machines.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flugtag

Kuwait had it's first Flugtag event on Nov 2 2007. I had marked this event in my calendar ever since it was announced about 6 months ago, as I knew it would provide some great photo opportunities.

Even though I was feeling a bit under the weather (due to my asthma acting up again), I decided to head off to the show and dragged my family along with me. I packed the Nikkor 80-200 f2.8 lens as I knew it would provide me with the necessary reach to shoot the event. When we reached the event area (Marina Waves), I was a little apprehensive that the lens may not be good enough - especially after I saw some photogs toting lenses that must have been around 400mm at the telephoto end. My apprehension was quickly put to rest once I selected a nice vantage point and tested the lens. The range of 80 to 200mm was more than sufficient for capturing action shots (though I would not have complained if I could somehow afford the Nikkor 200-400 f4).

I set the camera to group dynamic AF, so that the camera could quickly achieve focus on the moving subjects, and set my camera to continuos shooting mode.

The camera/lens combination performed superbly. Even though the lens does not have VR (vibration reduction), I never needed it for this particular event as it was bright enough for me to shoot in the 1/1000th second range at around f4 to f8, with the ISO set to it's base 100.