I was up at Paine Field after work one day for the arrival of a DHL/Singapore Airlines 777F.  Before it was due in, an Alaska Airlines 737 was due in on one of the scheduled flights.  Alaska operations at Paine Field originally were just using the Embraers but, with the success of some of the routes, they have upgraded a number of the services to the 737.  I thought this would be a good opportunity to see whether the low shutter speed settings I was planning for the 777F would be okay.

I wasn’t going down to some crazy low shutter speed.  I wanted to make sure I got a good shot.  However, when you are close to the runway, as is the case at the windsock, you don’t need to be too low to get some blur.  I was only using the 24-105 at that range as things are very close.  The level of background blur I got was okay.  It would be good to get more but it was going to be fine for the 777F.  When playing with this approach, you know that a bunch of the shots will not be sharp enough.  Unfortunately, you never know whether the key moments will be the sharp ones.  Fortunately, one of the better shots was with a healthy dose of tire smoke as they touched down.  I was happy with the result.