Testing out the auto rig.

Village Idiot

So I had the stuff I needed but it was a huge pain in the ass and I never got around to actually trying this. I had a 10' aluminum conduit pole that barely fit into my pathfinder.

Well about two weeks ago, I sold the pathfinder and got a jetta GLI. This motivated me to find a pole I could break into sections to make it more portable.

I still need to make an adjustable ND filter, maybe buy a graduated ND, and clean my sensor. I was shooting at f/22 & ISO 50 as that's the only way I could even make it to a one second exposure.

mercphoto

You'll definitely want an ND filter but I'm don't think a graduated ND filter will be of any help for this type of work. And 1-second is plenty for a rig shot, even at walking speeds. The key is location, backgrounds, shooting angles, etc. In other words, the composition. In your shot that business in the background is never going to blur away, even with several seconds of shutter, because it is basically receeding back in the frame, not across the frame. Make sense? And the stuff off to the right side of the car is too far away to have much motion across the frame. Another trick is to drive in a curved path, not a straight path, as this imparts more motion on the background items.

If you can swing it get a longer pole. I have 16' of tubing (in 4' sections), and having the camera further out definitely helps as well.

This is a half-second exposure at walking speeds, curved path, with a better background than you had:


Have fun!

Village Idiot

I have three sections of 48" pole. I was just using two as this is the first time I've had this on a car. It's a lot heavier than the 10' single pole I originally had. I was at a VW meet up and just wanted to see how it would turn out. We're thinking about trying something in the same city as the meetup downtown, as they have a pretty good night life, so I'd be able to get some decent shots.

The tricky part would be the people stopping traffic and having to do a rig shot in about 1 minute before we tossed everything in the back of a truck and made off before the cops could arrive.

That would definitely be a good story.

Sexy6Chick

Man I love seeing these shots.

mercphoto

Sexy6Chick wrote: »

Man I love seeing these shots.

My favorite rig shot of all time, go find image 20 of 50, "Velocity": (hint: blue and white Ferrari)

http://notbland.com/portfolio.htm

Sexy6Chick

mercphoto wrote: »

My favorite rig shot of all time, go find image 20 of 50, "Velocity": (hint: blue and white Ferrari)

http://notbland.com/portfolio.htm

That's a nice one indeed! Never mind that angle on a Ferrari haha. Mycanikon has a lot of guys that are into this - I check their auto section on a regular basis.