Pic(k) of the week 52: Desert Falcon - most advanced F-16E Block 60
The last Pic(k) of the week for 2015, comes from the Al Ain Air Championship held last week at the Al Ain airport in the UAE.
Even though, I will dedicate an entire blogpost to the event before 2015 comes to a close, all of the images of the Al Ain Air Championship can be found here.
The image below is of an UAE Air Force F-16E Block 60 fighter jet; the most advanced version of the F-16 ever built. Yes, it is technically more advanced than the F-16's the USAF is presently operating! It is often referred to as a 4,5 generation fighter, with fourth generation aircraft being the "classic" F-16's, F-15's, F-18's, Rafale and Typhoon. Fifth generation fighters mainly consists of F-22 and the brand-new F-35 aircraft.
For myself and lot of other aviation geeks, the F-16 remains one of the sexiest fighter jets ever built; although the F-16E model with the integral fuel tanks on the side of the fuselage, has lost some of that visual appeal...
The UAE Air Force presently operates 54 F-16E's and 25 two seat F-16F's' and is the only Air Force operating the E and F model. An excellent write-up of this top of the line Block 60 "Fighting Falcon" can be found here.
Image details:
Fujfilm X-T1 with the XF 50-140 and XF 1.4X Teleconverter
ISO 200, 112mm, 1/200s, f7.1
Lightroom CC 6.2 for RAW development
Nik SilverEfex Pro for Black and White conversion
Final dodge and burn with Photoshop CC
Yes, at 112mm I could have removed the 1.4X teleconverter and shot with the 50-140 on its own... But given the excellent image quality of the TC, I didn't even bother! An updated review of the XF 1.4X TC can be found here.
Comments