Very appealing color combination, appropriate for the Challenge; and fantastic «available» lighting for the shot. There was a time—in the eighties—a balloonist friend of mine used to take me up in his «Hot Air Affair», at times even during competitions: wonderful and unforgettable experiences, especially for an aviator like me, accustomed to flying high and with engine «noise» (be aware that what's noise in your ear, may be music in mine ;-)) There was always an enormous lot of heartfelt camaraderie among the Hot Air crowd, surprisingly—at least to me—also among competitors. Thank you, davev, for having taken me down memory lane! ~ db.
What I like about this shot is the effect that the people in the image have on the person viewing the image. Everyone is looking up, and that makes my eye want to look up, so that my focus keeps coming back to the flame. Nice job.
The 5DMKII is very good at handling noise in typical shots. As you can see, I had the setting at EV -1, 1/2000 and still the flame is blown out. You can imagine that if the flame was that bright, that the darks (everything else) would be really dark. Enter Photoshop and the process of brightening up a very dark photo. This is also one of those shots that I think i may have reprocessed a few times (of the saved jpg) so the noise is there for that reason. dave.
I can feel the heat from that baby from here. I got a tethered ride in one once and I made a mental note to myself that if I ever take a full ride be sure to bring a hat. It got very warm on the top of my thin head.
What I find interesting is the amount of noise given the camera and settings. I thought the 5DII was excellent at noise control. Paul
