Pics from the Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH

[tommyrot]

I went to the Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH last Saturday with my A6000. The place is dimly-lit (to preserve the planes) so I figured I'd use my Sony 35mm f/1.8 lens because of its good low-light performance. I ended up switching to my Sony 20mm f/2.8 pancake lens because I needed something wider and the pancake is faster than my Sony 18-55 mm kit lens. I probably should have used the kit lens, as I didn't use the pancake at f/2.8 very much because usually I needed a larger depth of field.

I used a tripod for some of the shots, and those shots turned out the best. Shooting handheld I was usually at ISO 3200 and I used noise reduction in Lightroom for those. I also used the "Enable Profile Corrections" in Lightroom to help fix distortion and vignetting on the 20mm pancake. I also did a lot of exposure adjustments in Lightroom.

Anyway, here's a few pictures from the set:

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Martin MB-2 by tommyrot4, on Flickr

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B-17 Flying Fortress by tommyrot4, on Flickr

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B-29 Bocks Car by tommyrot4, on Flickr (the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki)

I took a lot of detail shots like this one:

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B-47 engine pod and outrigger landing gear by tommyrot4, on Flickr

The rest of the set is here.

 

[chrid]

nice shots, love old planes like this

 

[NickCyprus]

Nice shots indeed! Big fan of those custom personalised decals on those old planes

 

[davect01]

nice shots, love old planes like this

Nice shots indeed! Big fan of those custom personalised decals on those old planes

Always love plane shots.

Well done

 

[Bimjo]

Nice shoot. For future reference this is one of those situation where Hand Held Twilight or Anti Motion Blur modes can come in really handy. Of course I never think to use it myself.

 

[tommyrot]

a few more

I forgot to mention that they've moved my favorite airplane (the XB-70 Valkyrie) into storage where it can't be seen by the public. I was so looking forward to getting some nice pictures of it. (They're building a new building, so the XB-70 should be on display again in a few years.)

Anyway, here's three more:

This is my most popular picture on flickr for some reason, so I wish I'd used the tripod for it:

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F-86 by tommyrot4, on Flickr

The B-47 is one of the most influential planes ever made, as it led to modern jet airliners:

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B-47 by tommyrot4, on Flickr.

The C-46 looks great from this angle:

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C-46 transport by tommyrot4, on Flickr

 

[davect01]

Love the inside skeleton shot

 

[Hawkman]

Is that an actual B-2 behind the B-47, or a mockup?

 

[tommyrot]

I don't remember why, but I never made it to the B-2. Here's what the museum says:

Northrop Grumman constructed two additional aircraft without engines or instruments for fatigue testing. On the second of those test aircraft (the B-2 on display at the museum), engineers attached computer-controlled, hydraulically driven plates along the airframe to simulate all flying conditions. They calculated that the structure would reach 150 percent of the design specifications, but the wing withstood stresses over 161 percent before it finally cracked.