My first photo - Helicopter flying (Rio+20 conference)

[Panama Hat & Camera]

Hi,
My name is Antonio and I signed up to the CiC community some time ago.
This is the first photo I'm sending to the CiC. I would like to have your comments (C&C).
During the Rio +20 conference, the Federal Highway Police supported the event with policemen in helicopters and on motorcycles. I was talking to my wife when I heard the sound of sirens. I grabbed and turned on my camera, ran to the balcony, pointed it at the closest helicopter and I took the picture I'm sharing with you.
Exif data:
1/1000 f/6.3 ISO 400 256 mm FFE (Kodak Z990)

Antonio.

[Otavio]

Hi Antonio. This is a very good first photo! I like the "effect" that the exhaust caused, below the helicopter's tail, as if it was blurring the rocks behind! Nice! Keep posting...

[KHarmon]

Great first photo!!! Only thing I would like to see is a crop where it is tighter to the bottom of the chopper. Just more for curisosity.

KHarmon

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Antonio,

Found it!

Not a bad capture, most of the issues are related to the weather - it looks quite dull, with 'flat' lighting, casting no shadows, or the limitations of the small sensor camera. I also appreciate it was a grab shot and as such, I can tell you, it is better than most of mine

Thanks for providing the EXIF/shooting data, that allows me to ask whether you could have used a wider aperture than f/6.3? (in order to reduce DoF)

It could be improved somewhat with Post Processing (PP), but I don't know what you have available or how much you want to do that, or indeed; what you may have already done. If you wanted to make the most of it, I'd suggest taking the full size shot into a program that does layers, perform a small Local Contrast Enhancement on the cliff and trees on one layer (and a blur), perform a sharpening on the other to the chopper only, then combine so you get the best of both layers. You'd have to be careful with the exhaust heat haze and rotor tip vapour trails though, they're worth preserving.

Personally, I'm not sure about cropping from the bottom; I think the cliff face adds to the context of the shot and if you crop too far up, the ends up chopper smack in the middle of the frame with little or no cliffs. In fact I'd almost suggest a vertical orientation shot to show more height (unless the bit we can't see contains a lot of distractions, as it might).

The more I look at this, the more I think it's pretty good as it is.

Cheers,

[Mike Buckley]

I second all of Dave's comments.

Your shot is far better than mine in the exact same situation when I heard a helicopter, turned around to see it and saw that it was Marine One (the helicopter that carries the president of the U. S.). My shutter speed completely stopped the action of the rotors. Though yours shows a little blur, if we ever have the chance to prepare for helicopter shots we would want to ask others ahead of time about a range of shutter speeds that might provide the ideal blur.

[FrankMi]

Wow! That is a great shot. You even captured the rotor tip vapor trails! Yes, you could likely improve the contrast and reduce the noise in post processing but it is a great image nonetheless.

[allenlennon]

great image, but is it legal in Rio to take photos of police vehicles? In australia its illegal to doso?

[Panama Hat & Camera]

Otavio,
Thank you for seeing my picture, for your comments and for your encouragement.
When reporting the effect of the gas turbine, you showed that you are a careful observer.
Greetings,
Antonio.

[Panama Hat & Camera]

Kris,
Thank you for yours comments.
Following your suggestion, I made a crop at the bottom of the picture (but I didn't post the photo), but the result was not better than the original photo. I believe that is because the cliff is part of the context of the picture and gives an idea of ​​the altitude that the helicopter was flying (the photo was taken with a focal length equal to 256 mm FFE).
Greetings
Antonio.

[Panama Hat & Camera]

Dear Dave,
Thank you for spending your time looking at the photo I sent. Actually, the weather was cloudy, almost without shadows, which decreased slightly the dynamism of the photo. I believe that the small sensor was not a big trouble for the picture, but caused a bit of noise when I used ISO 400.
The manual mode of the z990 allows to adjust the aperture and shutter speed, but is almost useless because do not inform if the exposure is correct. So I always use aperture priority or shutter priority. The day before, I was trying to photograph some seagulls flying, using ISO 400 / shutter priority (1/1000 s) and these were the settings for shooting the helicopter. When I saw the helicopter, I considered that the speed was adequate, and I had no time to make any changes. The limit of the z990 is 1/2000, which would give an opening of f/4.5 (f/4.1 is the maximum aperture at 256 mm FFE) and perhaps the picture could be better.
The original photo (jpg - 4000 x 3000 pixels - 5.7 MB) was not post-processed and I reduced it to 680 x 510 pixels (223.5 kB), which got much worse the image. I applied the recommended post-processing suggested by "HELP THREAD: How can I post images here?", which improved the picture (249.8 kB). After the postage, its size was reduced to 106.6 kB, which worsened a little image quality. In the next posts, I will apply unsharp mask before and after reducing the size. In any case, this is the kind of picture that a superzoom (P510, SX40, z990) does better than the Canon S100.
I will try to apply your pos-processing tips in this photo.
Regards,
Antonio.

[Panama Hat & Camera]

Mike,
thank you very much to see and comment on my photo.
I'd like to see the picture you took of the Marine One
Greetings
Anthony.

[Panama Hat & Camera]

Frank,
Thank you for seeing my picture, for your comments and for your encouragement.
On the contrast of the photo, please see my answer to Dave.
Sincerely,
Anthony.

[Panama Hat & Camera]

Allen,
thanks for your comments and for your concern about the legality of the photo. Taking photos of police vehicles that are in simple task of patrolling is not illegal in Brazil. Before posting the photos, I consulted two lawyers about it. There are pictures and movies of helicopters of Brazilian Federal Highway Police on the Internet.
Greetings
Antonio.

[allenlennon]

Thats good, in Australia we are not allowed to take any types of photos of any emergancy vehicals.