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Well it seems ages since I last posted photos, despite the Gilsland meet-up at the beginning of the month. However, it's been a busy time trying to make the most of a few events and the occasional glimpses of the wonderful autumn sunlight and colours that seem to have lasted so long.
One of the main events for me in the last month has been a Press & Media day with the Royal Netherlands Air Force while they had a detachment of helicopters deployed to Carlisle airport as part of an exercise called 'TAC Blaze'. This was an opportunity to see behind the scenes of the deployment and to watch as they went through their training with Dutch troops at Spadeadam MoD range. A few days later came another chance to photograph them and, as always, a day to remember especially watching the Dutch pilots showing off their low fly skills.
It was also an opportunity to try to capture the long time bugbear for me of slow shutter speed (to capture rotor blur), panning, and manual exposure, all of which were impeded by a mix of light and not helped by helicopters that constantly moved around the photo location.
All photos were taken with an Olympus E-30, Sigma 70-200 f2.8 APO EXII lens and the second day photos also made use of the Olympus EC-14 1.4 teleconverter. Some of these images will seem grainier than the originals due to compression and/or additional sharpening post conversion from RAW to jpeg.
1/. The day started well with the sunrise lighting up the early morning mist
2/. After our briefing we watched the Apache helicopters take off for their mission
3/.
4/. The afternoon was spent observing a training mission with Dutch troops
5/.
6/.
7/.
8/. The finale of the day was a low fly past by the chinook
A few days later I was back to watch some more action - amazingly I nearly cancelled the day as low thick hill fog shrouded my first observation point. Thankfully a passing Dutch soldier told me that it was sunbathing weather a mile to the north!
9/. The Apache is a fearsome chilling beast and not really something that you want when it has the camera 'eye' on you
10/.
11/. Whereas the chinook is a noisy and seemingly ponderous machine
12/.
13/.
14/. and finally, a fake photo - well the sunset is a real panorama but the two chinooks have been added to show some friends a shot that we were very close to getting . . . unfortunately the helicopters were two minutes too late to fly past our position and when they did they went behind us instead of in front!!
Apologies for the large post - but it's pleasing to show that the Oly gear did good in circumstances where Canikon are held up to be the best!
Regards
Chris
One of the main events for me in the last month has been a Press & Media day with the Royal Netherlands Air Force while they had a detachment of helicopters deployed to Carlisle airport as part of an exercise called 'TAC Blaze'. This was an opportunity to see behind the scenes of the deployment and to watch as they went through their training with Dutch troops at Spadeadam MoD range. A few days later came another chance to photograph them and, as always, a day to remember especially watching the Dutch pilots showing off their low fly skills.
It was also an opportunity to try to capture the long time bugbear for me of slow shutter speed (to capture rotor blur), panning, and manual exposure, all of which were impeded by a mix of light and not helped by helicopters that constantly moved around the photo location.
All photos were taken with an Olympus E-30, Sigma 70-200 f2.8 APO EXII lens and the second day photos also made use of the Olympus EC-14 1.4 teleconverter. Some of these images will seem grainier than the originals due to compression and/or additional sharpening post conversion from RAW to jpeg.
1/. The day started well with the sunrise lighting up the early morning mist
2/. After our briefing we watched the Apache helicopters take off for their mission
3/.
4/. The afternoon was spent observing a training mission with Dutch troops
5/.
6/.
7/.
8/. The finale of the day was a low fly past by the chinook
A few days later I was back to watch some more action - amazingly I nearly cancelled the day as low thick hill fog shrouded my first observation point. Thankfully a passing Dutch soldier told me that it was sunbathing weather a mile to the north!
9/. The Apache is a fearsome chilling beast and not really something that you want when it has the camera 'eye' on you
10/.
11/. Whereas the chinook is a noisy and seemingly ponderous machine
12/.
13/.
14/. and finally, a fake photo - well the sunset is a real panorama but the two chinooks have been added to show some friends a shot that we were very close to getting . . . unfortunately the helicopters were two minutes too late to fly past our position and when they did they went behind us instead of in front!!
Apologies for the large post - but it's pleasing to show that the Oly gear did good in circumstances where Canikon are held up to be the best!
Regards
Chris
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