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