How do I take night time photos of cars? Some of the SC guys are planning on meeting up this friday evening and I'm gonna bring my Sony V1 and tripod for pics. But I'm cluless about taking night pics. What type of settings should the camera be on? I'm really a beginner...I've always wanted to learn, but have been lazy and have always stuck with the auto feature :egads:
Anyways, suggestions would be appreciated.
CleanSC
02-03-05, 11:22 AM
Hey guys, especially brendan...
How do I take night time photos of cars? Some of the SC guys are planning on meeting up this friday evening and I'm gonna bring my Sony V1 and tripod for pics. But I'm cluless about taking night pics. What type of settings should the camera be on? I'm really a beginner...I've always wanted to learn, but have been lazy and have always stuck with the auto feature :egads:
Anyways, suggestions would be appreciated.
I'm not a pro by any stretch but I enjoy myself and for starters you need a tripod. It's mandatory because of the longer shutter times you will need for night shots. It's all about lighting to try to get your car evenly lit even if it's very little light. If there's a ton of light on one side and not another, the light side will get overexposed and the dark side underexposed. So light the car evenly all around and then play with your ISO and shutter speeds to get the desired effect.
As an example, this shot below (which I admit I botched) has too much light on the front compared to the side. Because of this the front is overexposed compared to the side.
White cars at night can be a bltch. Darker colors are more forgiving with this. Of course there's tons of other aspects regarding composition, camera settings etc, etc, but I'll let the pros take care of that. This particular lighting issue is a problem for me with white or bright subjects at night.
The shot in my sig is a different story as I purposely overexposed the front left corner of the car to create a vignette effect within the shot to later overlay it on a black sig.
brendanlim
02-03-05, 01:26 PM
CleanSC has some really good pointers. Remember, tripod, good lighting, long shutter speed, and low ISO. The tripod of course is to keep things still. The longer shutter speed is to absorb more light -- Your camera in AUTO mode automatically chooses to use a short shutter speed during daylight so it won't absorb too much light and make the picture all white. Because of the lack of light around you, you compensate for this by increasing the exposure time of the shot. ISO is light sensitivity. I use the lowest ISO I have -- ISO 100 on my rebel.
Also, aperture is important. It is pretty much how might light the camera allows in during that long exposure. It is denoted as f/#. # of course is the number. The bigger the number, the smaller the hole of light. To make things sharp, choose to use a smaller aperture. A lot of lenses are really sharp around f/8-9.
If your camera has a shutter priority mode (Tv on Canons) -- all you do is change the shutter speed normally fractions of a second to 30 seconds max -- then the camera automatically adjusts everything else. If your camera has aperture priority mode (Av on Canons) -- all you do is adjust the aperture and it adjusts shutter speed, etc. These modes are very useful and I find myself using them a lot.
If you go to http://www.pbase.com/brendanlim/automotive/ you can check out a lot of my night shots. Click on the image and under the image on that next page you can click on, FULL EXIF, which will display my shutter speed, aperture, ISO, etc. for that shot. Should be helpful. Best of luck!
Neo
02-03-05, 02:20 PM
What I also found helpful is to use the timer mode. It will eliminate any vibration/movement from pushing the button. :)
bitkahuna
02-03-05, 08:09 PM
Brendan, why the low ISO? This just means you need a longer shutter speed. Or is noise your concern?
My 20D is fine with higher ISOs and I can always post process to remove noise. My camera also have a double exposure mode to automatically remove noise.
howiedoit
02-03-05, 09:16 PM
I'm not a pro by any stretch but I enjoy myself and for starters you need a tripod. It's mandatory because of the longer shutter times you will need for night shots. It's all about lighting to try to get your car evenly lit even if it's very little light. If there's a ton of light on one side and not another, the light side will get overexposed and the dark side underexposed. So light the car evenly all around and then play with your ISO and shutter speeds to get the desired effect.
As an example, this shot below (which I admit I botched) has too much light on the front compared to the side. Because of this the front is overexposed compared to the side.
White cars at night can be a bltch. Darker colors are more forgiving with this. Of course there's tons of other aspects regarding composition, camera settings etc, etc, but I'll let the pros take care of that. This particular lighting issue is a problem for me with white or bright subjects at night.
The shot in my sig is a different story as I purposely overexposed the front left corner of the car to create a vignette effect within the shot to later overlay it on a black sig.
OMG, your car is beautiful! This is the first big picture that I've seen of your car. I wanna see more! Looks awesome, man!!!
Thanks for the tips guys. It'll help a lot. I'll post up some pics after the mini-meet.
brendanlim
02-03-05, 09:22 PM
Brendan, why the low ISO? This just means you need a longer shutter speed. Or is noise your concern?
My 20D is fine with higher ISOs and I can always post process to remove noise. My camera also have a double exposure mode to automatically remove noise.
I guess it's just my style to use really low ISO's so that I end up using a longer than necessary exposure time so that I get the "star" effect with lights. Also, yeah, noise is definately a big problem. If you go to my automotive gallery and check the last 4 on the bottom, you'll see all the noise from my latest shoot of my friend's car. Used an ISO of 400-800. I tried using the despeckle filter on Photoshop to remove the noise ... and it did, but it took away some sharpness. It ended up kind of blurring the picture, so I decided to not do that. So, I've been sticking with low ISO for me.
Can you explain the double exposure? Sounds interesting. I've been thinking of getting a 20D soon btw Paul.
LOTC
02-04-05, 12:03 AM
ok brendin what were your settings for night time shots on the Canon S50? did you use night mode?
brendanlim
02-04-05, 06:28 AM
ok brendin what were your settings for night time shots on the Canon S50? did you use night mode?
I always used Tv mode for my S50 (shutter priority).
There are some S50 night shots here too ....
http://www.auburn.edu/~limbren/
CleanSC
02-04-05, 06:28 AM
OMG, your car is beautiful! This is the first big picture that I've seen of your car. I wanna see more! Looks awesome, man!!!
lol SHHHH... I have a shoot scheduled with Tony so there will be quality pics up very soon. You all will definitely be notified. :p
LOTC
02-04-05, 02:46 PM
I always used Tv mode for my S50 (shutter priority).
There are some S50 night shots here too ....
http://www.auburn.edu/~limbren/
ok some really really newbie questions
ok TV mode got that.
What do I set the ISO? so If I set the ISO to the lowest which if 50 I believe, I will get better shots from the headlights and such correct?
On the Exposure which side do I go to -2 or +2?
Also the flash -2 or +2?
anything else I need to know
:cry:
howiedoit
02-05-05, 01:35 AM
ok, here are my first attempt at getting good night shots with a tripod.
howiedoit
02-05-05, 01:37 AM
another one
CleanSC
02-07-05, 06:23 AM
:thumbup: on the first one... Second one has nice composition but the lack of light on the CL members ;) has them a little in the dark.
Nice work.
LOTC
02-17-05, 09:44 PM
Ok Brendan I tried the TV mode with the S50, but i couldnt get the star look like this.