Shooting Airshow with Point and Shoot Camera

Taking interesting pictures at an airshow does not always require expensive SLRs. Last weekend I attended my first airshow ever. 25th Annual Wings Over Houston Airshow at Ellington Airport on Saturday, October 31 and Sunday, November 1 2009. I'd share with you what I learned so far.
All photos were taken with a Sony Cybershot DSC-H2, and I'm describing my experiences specific to this model.
I found these features useful:
Manual focus: Most things happen pretty far from you, so you can safely set focus to infinity and just shoot away without the delay needed by autofocus.
Custom settings memory: Some cameras will allow you to remember your favorite settings. Before the show, I programmed the camera to: zoom at maximum, manual focus set at infinity (see above), continuous drive mode and Aperture was set up to 1/1000 sec.

And thats it after this it was just click click click ...

On the picture on right I tried to get US flag to add some flavor to the pic.

Bright and clear sky added more savor but be prepared for the hot weather. Wear a hat and apply sunblocker on exposed skin. Also, be sure to drink a lot of water to prevent dehydration

I used wide angle option for the photo above; the plane wasn't important, the smoke trail and vastness of the sky were.

And the audience's reaction was as interesting as the show in the sky.

To know more about this airshow and about Blue Angels you can visit these sites

Wings over Houston

Blue Angels