50mm test #2 - portrait of Lord Dowding

 

Sigma 50mm Art lens test outing number two - not exactly a portrait, but kind of ..

the Battle of Britain memorial steam locomotive from 1946, the Lord Dowding.

Named after the Commander of Fighter command during the Battle of Britain,

he was undoubtedly one of the key figures who stopped us all having to blog in German.

A West Country Class locomotive, defined as a "light" class, but weighing in at 90 tons and as we found out, capable of shaking the ground from about a mile away!

 

Unfortunately, despite it being a beautiful sunny day up until this point (this spot had dappled light from nearby trees), it suddenly clouded over just before the train arrived and made the lighting a bit flat.  However, as always, it was a great experience to get so close to such a powerful and elegant machine in full flight, the photograph is only a token snapshot of the moment.

 

Technically, the cloudy conditions pushed the ISO up to 400 to let me stay at f/6.3 - my chosen depth of field (~35m) - and 1/500s to minimise motion blur as it moves past.  This shot has slight motion blur on the engine already and since the locomotive was at full steam ahead, any consequent shots would have been really hard to pan to keep sharp, so I think the settings were about right for the kit, location and available light.   Shot at +0.6ev exposure compensation just because the foreground was so murky and I didn't want to have to brighten dark shadows (I knew the engine was black and dark green) at ISO 400, with the clouds brought back down to probably about -1ev in Lightroom.

 

The 50mm actually has a pretty distinct vignette with in camera lens compensation turned off on a full frame body (DxO Mark rates center to corner as -1.5ev difference), however this image is a slightly tweaked version of the natural vignette (but perhaps not as tweaked as you might think).

 

Enjoying the lens so far and really looking forwards to using it in it's natural habitat next month when we have our next wedding shoot.

 

 

ISO400, 50mm, f/6.3, 1/500s, +0.6ev

 

 

Garden life #1

 

 

 

Pond life in the garden has taken a very sudden jump in the direction of Spring arriving!

A flurry of frogs, a flapping of flippers, a ripple of .. ripples .. and hey presto we now have a pond chock full of spawn.

 

That combined with it still being light when I get hope - HOORAH!!  - and we have ourselves some photography to grab!  .. and .. you may have to sit down for this, but I'm actually blogging it the same day!!?!   CRAZY!  What is this odd behaviour?

 

Not taken on the new 50mm, but the 135mm and cropped in a fair amount at f/2, also with a fair amount of Lightroom noise reduction, since while it's light, it's not exactly blazing sunshine either!

 

Also seemed like an opportune moment to drop in a Heron shot from a few months back - the enemy - this one taken long the local canal and hopefully won't be visiting the garden anytime soon (for the sake of the frogs) - although I'm sure there are baby Herons somewhere who would be grateful of our frog-ling farm supplies.  Photo is ok, some nice dynamic back lighting and shade, but was waiting for it's time to be blogged, unfortunately it ends up being a co-star to the frogs. 

 

 

Proud parent on frog-spawn guard duty
ISO800, 135mm, f/2, 1/125s, cropped, noise reduction (leant on a bucket next to the pond)

Backlit Grey Heron on the Wilt & Berks canal
ISO320, 400mm, f/6.3, 1/400s, cropped, noise reduction



Primal 50

So, for the first time in quite a while, I have a new lens!
With less landscapey pics going on at the moment and not being able to afford any kind of prime 600mm wildlife lens, it is my second prime lens purchase (to go along with my Canon 135mm f/2.0) .. a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art series lens.

So.. since I swapped to a full frame sensor, my 16-35 is now super wide, even at 35mm ... and I miss some of the old ~25-50mm range that the lens had on my old APS-C sensor (1.6x crop factor).

This new beast is also f/1.4, so super fast, even compared to my f/2,8 lenses - which I always considered reasonably fast anyway.  The pay off for being super quick, super sharp and super sexy? Weight!  It feels like a solid block of metal - since surely not even glass can weigh this much?!

Anyway, all that lovely sharp quickness (no-one said this was going to be a technical review!) is going to be just perfect for street wandering, event snapping, wedding capturing and low light gathering.

See full size demo image below of Weston-Super-Mare pier for sharpness at f/8.

I'm off to start saving for a 600mm prime wildlife lens!....

ISO100, 50mm, f/8, 1/200s