Thanks for the nice comment. I can't see their eyeballs, but their sunglasses are clearly visible -- Raybans?
Regarding equipment, I know what you mean, my lens is new, but the car I drive is 13 years old.
On the subject of high ISO, I rarely shoot above ISO 100 for prop planes and ISO 200 for jets. Prop planes (and helicopters even more so) are difficult to photograph well because you don't want to freeze the prop/rotor, or the image looks unnatural -- I shoot helicopters and props in shutter priority with 1/200 for choppers, 1/250 or 1/320 for pistons, and 1/400 for turboprops, and at ISO 100 that often already takes me into apertures that give me more DOF than I would like.
Jets are far easier because I don't need to worry about freezing things that shouldn't be frozen (though I have some pictures with compressor blades that are standing still -- that's what happens at 1/8000). That's why I shoot jets in aperture priority at F4.0 to make some allowance for getting the focus on a fast-moving object right.
As far as IS is concerned, I don't use it at all unless the image is static or the camera will try to correct for intentional camera movement. Even if you enable panning (vertical stabilization only), there is usually enough vertical movement to cause problems, either because the plane is in fact moving vertically while landing, or because you are shooting from an elevated position and the plane moves diagonally through the frame.
I don't think the ZD 300mm would make a good lens for aviation photography (unless you are talking about the ZD 70-300) -- for birding maybe, but for planes that are often moving quickly towards me, I would want the ability to zoom and frame the shot with some flexibility. At longer distances atmospheric distortion can also become severe, I've got quite a few shots where heat radiating off the runway ruined an otherwise nice image, and the problem obviously gets worse with distance -- check out the office buildings in the background:
Cheers!
