Motorcycle / Carshow technique

kres

I was kinda shocked when a I searched for "carshow" and got 3 hits. :huh

Anywho... I'm making my yearly trek to see the shiney toys at the Cycleworld Show in DC next weekend. I thought that I'd arrive with a clue or two about good techniques.

Any hints? :scratch

ian408

kres wrote:

I was kinda shocked when a I searched for "carshow" and got 3 hits.

Anywho... I'm making my yearly trek to see the shiney toys at the Cycleworld Show in DC next weekend. I thought that I'd arrive with a clue or two about good techniques.

Any hints?

Yeah. Hit the Ducati booth. Here in the SF area, we had some vintage
UJMs and the Norton Club brought it all--wow! You might check out the
K1200GT. I hear they're pretty cool

Oh, you wanted photo tips

It's bound to be pretty dark. So a fast lens and likely a higher ISO to keep
the speed up. If you can, perhaps a custom white balance though shooting
in RAW will likely give you better opportunity to correct WB.

Enjoy the show!

kres

Mmmmmm Duc's. I'll never own one, but I'll always stop by to sit on the sexy italians.

As for the K bikes, I'm a Boxer-Guy myself.

(And thanks for the shooting hints too. )

JBurt

kres wrote:

I was kinda shocked when a I searched for "carshow" and got 3 hits.

Anywho... I'm making my yearly trek to see the shiney toys at the Cycleworld Show in DC next weekend. I thought that I'd arrive with a clue or two about good techniques.

Any hints?

I've pretty much given up taking good pictures at indoor shows. Focusing on closeups and reflections can work. I do custom car shows which have a different client base than manufacturer's shows. I carry my camera and take shots as a way to make contact with potential clients for private shoots. Lighting, reflections, and background are always bad. (not to mention crowds)

At times, I have used an assistant for crowd control and hand carrying a slaved and gelled fill flash. I just mainly use the shows for contacts anymore and to enjoy the company.

An assistant, a fast lens, higher ISO, and a monopod for stability. A good diffused flash would be handy also.

asylumxl

www.flickr.com/people/asylumxl

check out my gallery on flickr, theres a few not to bad car show shots there i believe.

CavalierPhoto

JBurt wrote:

...Focusing on closeups and reflections can work... Lighting, reflections, and background are always bad. (not to mention crowds)

Agreed. I took some shots at the "Burn the Point" car show in Billings, Montana in Sept last year and closeups and reflections were about all I ended up with as decent shots.

Be prepared for lots of people and poor lighting especially indoors. Patience will be a virtue.

Chris V.

clove

Get really close. Find an interesting detail on the car and fill the frame with it. Things like a headlight, wheel, hood ornament, speedometer, etc. The most boring carshow photos are when people take the same old photos of the entire car, also capturing all the people milling about.

Also, you'll end up with tons of little bright dots of the reflections of the indoor lights. Take these out in Photoshop the same way you would remove dirt specs and smooth it over a little. You can end up with results looking like you had the car in the studio all to yourself.

kres

clove wrote:

Get really close. Find an interesting detail on the car and fill the frame with it. Things like a headlight, wheel, hood ornament, speedometer, etc. The most boring carshow photos are when people take the same old photos of the entire car, also capturing all the people milling about.

Also, you'll end up with tons of little bright dots of the reflections of the indoor lights. Take these out in Photoshop the same way you would remove dirt specs and smooth it over a little. You can end up with results looking like you had the car in the studio all to yourself.

Most of the shots I got that were of any value were close-up detail / new perspective shots. It was STUPID crowded there. A real personal irratation was that the Ducati display (That usually has some pretty cool Retro / vintage bikes in it) was turned into a 1-way in 1-way out Kennel of sorts. This means that it was literally elbow to elbow.

The lighting was like everyone said - awful. Constant shifts from incandestant to halogon, and getting a proper meter from the camera was like pulling teeth. That and I was using a new-to-me camera.

After grumping awhile about this, I remembered what I was there for - and the it was pretty arragent of me to expect that I was going to pull off studio worthly shots in this environment with a new peice of equipment (D200) with no "cheat modes" to fall back on for benchmarks and a really differnt light meter. So, I played and ran the gambit between point-and-shoot shots and working on metering and had a much better time of it.

If anything, this little excursion taught me that having a candence is critical. Example: Once we left the convention center there was a great impromtu brass concert going on. I got some pretty good shots of it, judging by the viewfinder.... however I had not switched my white-balance over from the convention center settings and they came out REALLY cold. Photoshop here I come.

I can tell you this - there was a flood of high end photo equipment being carried at the show. I saw a ton of pro-amatures at the show with $10K kits. I also saw one guy bounce his $2500 macro lens on the concrete. I almost cried for him. The pro's had all-access passes so they shot the event on thursday after set up - in talking to one of the pro-guys he said that the actual show days were a hunting trip with one body and a super-zoom for catching he human element. "You couldn't pay me enough to try to get one print worthly shot of the equipment in this mess - it's not worth the heartburn and bruises"