An embarrassing disgrace for Good Morning America (one hopes!)
So the cameraman was shooting the surfers... who were directly below the heli?
Nice shot of the skids then...!
And the heli doesn't appear to be tracking with the surfers.
These two points alone indicate that here is considerable displacement between helicopter and subject.
Then the aircraft banks toward the wave, hardly the reaction after a near miss especially if their is another surfer on the wave.
He probably banked to get closer to the wipeout.
Using knowledge of the size of the MD on can judge that the surfers size in frame is around 30% shorter than if he were adjacent the heli.
Since the video was taken with a long lens where for-shortening is the dominate characteristic this amount of size difference is a strong indicator that the two were not close together.
It is obvious a long lens was used, given the visual clues to the size of the wave and that we are not seeing much of the underside of the heli and that the camera appears to be well above the seal level height, so we can assume that the camera is either in another heli or on a dune or cliff and so probably 200 meters from the wave.
Can do the maths on what lens was used if someone knows the location of the beach.
Mickjoebill