These were retired a few years ago but until then, if you were in trouble on a mountain or at sea this is the sight you wanted to see. This example is now flown by Historic Helicopters based at Chard in Somerset. Photographed at the Shuttleworth Collection's Family Airshow in Bedfordshire 2021. Until I tried I thought helicopters in flight would be easy to photograph, however because the rotor speed is relatively low it is very easy to freeze it. This is shot at 1/100s.
David
I like the picture, shame it didn't have a blue sky as that would have contrasted nicely with the yellow helicopter.
I think 1/100th is about right to show motion.
Alan
very nice, was fortunate to see last show at Culdrose when they retired them out of the fleet air arm, loads of them that day
In my opinion the grey rotors work perfectly with the grey (background) sky.
A true representation of weather in "Merrie Olde Englande."
Nice bird, and nice capture.
Just a minor nit, but I would clone out a bit of the trees so that the copter is isolated from the background.
Nicely caught photo of the helicopter, well rendered colors, good placement of the subject in the frame. Congrats on getting the shutter speed just right on the copter - just fast enough to render the copter details and even the details of the fellow in the door, but slow enough to imply movement. The sky is well captured as you have detail in the clouds all over in spite of the contrast. The dizzying blur of the trees is a bit of a bother. It is a natural occurrence of the rotors creating that circular wind, but the shutter speed that's right for the copter gives those trees weird kind of blur. I would be tempted to either get rid of the trees or add more blur to just them to diminish the weirdness, and I'd clone out the chimney.
(Duplicate)
The chimney is fine, it adds context (a clue) in the photo of the helicopter’s height above ground, and… the photographer. It gives the viewer a sense of bearing / being on terra firma.
It is far from being obtrusive.
I spent years cloning stuff in Photoshop.
No more of that malarkey for me… what you get when I pull the trigger, is what you see, warts and all. lol
every picture tells a story
Thanks to everyone for taking the time to reply and offer critique.
AlanSh: It was a dull and windy day, a blue sky would have been nice.
Greg: Thanks for all the comments
camperjimk: Removing the bit of tree from behind the tail wheel is an idea, not sure how well I could do it, but certainly worth thinking about.
minniev: To me the blur in the trees is what I would expect to see, perhaps a slight increase in blur is worth looking at. I think I'm with Greg on the chimney. But there is a thin out of focus light line to the right of the chimney that could go.
Again thanks to all of you, very helpful to have my attention drawn to things I hadn't seen or hadn't considered.
David
I am not very skilled at photoshop and typically do a minimum of post processing. Even so this should be a quick and easy task. This can be done by selecting the rear wheel and supporting structures with either the one of the selection tools or manually with a lasso tool. Then select inverse and clone out some of the tree branches to create a gap.
I'll get back to my main computer and the original files at some point and have a serious look. I've just upgraded my pixel editing software from Affinity Photo to Affinity Photo 2 and I've really not got to grips with it yet.
David
How do you like affinity photo? I am considering dumping Adobe entirely and switching to Affinity.
I like it. I've not got to grips with version 2 which is a major re-write. Among other things I think the 'develop' from RAW is much improved although I expect I'll continue to use DXO PhotoLab for that. Some Adobe plug-ins work. I dropped Photoshop some time ago, a little before they went subscription only. The problem is I like taking photos, I like seeing really nice results, but I don't enjoy the actual post processing. I need to work up a degree of enthusiasm to really explore this new version.
That is the way I feel also. I enjoy shooting but not processing and I completely avoid anything approaching the field of "digital art". If I were a pro, I would hire someone to process my work.
The problem with that is, would they process it the way you wanted? If it helps all the images I've posted on here so far have had Affinity as their final step in processing. Otherwise there are many reviews and tutorials on-line. I'm sure there is a trial period available so if you want to jump you are just going to have to download it and spend some time getting to grips with it. I don't think I found it that difficult when I moved over from Photoshop, but that was some time ago.
David
Thats for your info on AF. At this point I am content with Canon DPP4 for opening raws and Elements with a few plugins for final processing. My workflow is typically pretty consistent and quick. I am just thinking ahead to the day that will come when I am finished with Elements and need an upgrade.
