Getting Photos right

Today was my last shift at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.  Weather was a lot warmer this monring, still chilly in the tent.  There were originally 3 of us on the work schedule - ended up with 5.  Being a Saturday, we were pretty busy talking with folks about ham radio.

I seemed to finally got the right camera settings for shooting the Dawn Patrol.  To get enough light, I set the ISO all the way up to 6400.  Manual focus because there was not enough light for the automatic settings.  Had to run -3 stops compensation with the bright balloons and the black sky.  I could (or should) have set the compensation at -4 or -5,  Processing the image from RAW, I was able to get the light correct.

Very light winds this morning.  Many of the balloons seemed to just stay on the same place.  The first ones launched drifted off to the SE.  No box wind running today.