Modest photos of classical volcanoes

(Double posting this, folks -- I posted it b y accident in the Open forum. :))

Flying from Rabaul to Port Moresby on Tuesday, I found myself passing over Bougainville. I hadn't been aware until I checked in that the plane was not a direct flight -- I hadn't taken any notice of the arrival time -- only the early morning departure time.

But here we were flying in a modern aircraft (Bombardier Dash 8 400) over volcano land -- which I had last flown in/around in DC3s and light aircraft in the late 1960s. So I unlimbered the GX7 with the 12-32 ready for a couple of pix.

But there were problems. Expecting to travel on the direct flight in the rear engined Fokker F100 (or whatever number) Ihad not paid attention to the seat position except for the side of the plane I was on. So I found myself under the engine, just behind he propeller. Turbulent air. Also the window could have done with a polish.

I took the first couple of pix in normal mode @ 32mm, then switched to Ex-Tele using the central half of the sensor, so 7MPX (given I was shooting in my preferred 3:2 format).

I PPed the pix in PhotoLine using Focus Magic plug-in for sharpening.

The first picture in normal mode. I don't know now the name of that volcano, I'll check when I get back home. It was still pretty early when I took this pic and the light was hazy sun.

View: gallery page

Switched to Ex-Tele and got this. Just a few minutes later and we had some more light; made a huge different to the original files. Pretty rugged, isn't it? Anyone for a morning dip?

View: gallery page

Finally after wehad landed and taken off again, we flew over Kieta, the little bay opposite the big island -- I lived and worked there for two tense years 1968-9. The fishing, by the way, is amazing. You can see the influence of the propeller on the left of the picture. This picture is pretty much OOC JPEG with just a bit of sharpening and a little haze removal.

View: gallery page

The first two pix took a bit of pretty heroic work in PP even though I had set the camera to Vivid mode and also adjust the curve to an S shape (darker shadows, brighter highlights) to improve contrast. The haze was very strong -- I had to use some pretty aggressive dehazing (using the haze color PhotoLine calculated for itself), then adjustment of the curves and raising contrast. Actually, I have just thought: I didn't check white balance! What an idiot! So I just diverted and checked white balance in one of the pix -- yes, it makes a bit of difference. Sigh!

Fortunately, good old iPhoto allows you to return to the original so I will reprocess a couple.

Oh -- noise was a factor in the sky of the second pic, so I copied the sky area (just a simple rectangular slice) to make a new file, applied some (a lot of) noise reduction in Topaz Adjust plug-in, then copied it back and pasted it into the picture.

Not great pix, but an indication of what is there. I would love to get back there in a light plane one fine day with the window open (no, not a helicopter, they give me the creeps).

PS: There was a 6.3 earthquake centered under the sea somewhere behind the volcanoes you can see while we were passing! Didn't feel thing! LOL!