C17 at the Air Force Museum

Had a little fun today shooting at the Air Force Museum. They put a C17 out in the air park a while ago and I finally had some time to go out and shoot it. I had my 28-105 zoom lens, my 50mm Series E lens, and my 14mm Sigma lens. I was out there between 12:30 and 1:30. It was a clear day and I wanted the shadow to fall on the underside of the plane with highlights on the upper portion. I shot one panorama with my 50mm and one shot with the 14mm from the same angle. I had to move closer with the 14mm to get that wide angle distorted perspective look. I also used the 50mm to get a detail of the back part of one of the engines. I converted that shot to black and white because I liked the contrast in the image.

Panorama with the 50mm

The panorama shot is a series of 6 images taken with my 50mm in portrait mode (long part of frame running from top to bottom instead of left to right). I used photomerge in Photoshop CS5 to merge the images.

14mm Lens

I was trying to get close to the same perspective as the panorama. I tried about 3 different angles and this one came out the best.

Rear of the Engine.

I took a series of shots of the engine at different aperture settings to try and get different depths of field. I shot at f/1.8, f/5.6, and f/11. I liked this one which was taken at f/5.6, The engine in background has just enough blur while the foreground engine is sharp all the way through.

Today's shoot was a great example of using that 12:00 high sunshine to your advantage. I got great shadows below the plane to give it shape and excellent high lights on the top to separate the plane from the sky. I did have to be careful about blowing those highlights but I think the overall lighting on the plane worked out quite well.