Water Bomber

[Paul_O]

We had a little excitment in our suburb today with a fire outbreak on the waterfront behind the local racecourse. Access was fairly limited so they called in the water bombers and used 2 x AS350 Squirells and 1 x S-61 Fire King (on lease from USA I believe?).

They were very effective and had most of the fire out in 2 hours or so

Paul

[PhotosGuy]

Glad the problem was solved, but those look about 1-stop overexposed, Paul. If you can't see all the steps in this, you probably should calibrate your monitor.
.

[RCoulter]

Awesome shots otherwise though!

[Stargazerfrank]

does look bright. add a 10% more color and levels adustment they will be Great.

[RCoulter]

Now that I look at it more, I wonder if the smoke is making it looked more washed out than it really is :?

[Paul_O]

Thanks all for the replies, I did review them on my laptop before posting which has a nice screen but is inconsistent (everything looks great on a bright lcd!).
It was very hazy but I'll try again with some more and post the results.

Paul

[Paul_O]

Here is another one I tried without applying any levels, +10 saturations and a little contrast. The smoke definitely makes it look washed out though. I have some better ones taken when the helicopter is above the smoke however there isn't much 'action' involved in the scene.

Paul

[H.B.]

Nice shots but I think you needed to shoot a tad slower to get some rotor blur.


Mick.

[inchman254]

Nice shots but I think you needed to shoot a tad slower to get some rotor blur.

Mick.

I was thinking the same thing at first, but it's a tough call on these shots.

The last one has some rotor blur because it's at 1/320th, but the water loses some detail at that speed. For water bomber shots, I would prefer to see the detail in the water. Just my preference, though.

[inchman254]

You had image editing on, so I thought I would try a technique I use to get rid of haze in my photos. Just some curves and a bit of sharpening... takes just a couple of minutes.

Here is the result. It's not the best... just a quick edit, but it does show how you can bring out the colours and detail in an otherwise hazy photo.

[Paul_O]

Thanks all for your comments, I tried shooting slower as well (I took a lot of photos!) to get the rotor blur however I'm not steady enough and resulted in images that were too soft.

inchman 254, I see what you mean by trying to get rid of the haze however I'm not very good with ps and my results didn't look good at all. There was a LOT of smoke and I was downwind without any means at the time to move location. I do also think that the scene should show smoke to give an overall impression of the situation as it was actually a fire, if I can lessen the effect but without removing it I will be happy.

I've got a lot more pics so will try to PP some more and see what I can come up with.

Once again, thanks all for your comments, all suggestions are accepted in a positive light

Paul