Here are 4 pics from last night's shoot of Blake's MINI. I have about 55 photos that I need to post process, but here are 4 quickies just to tease. Most exposures are 1-6 minutes, depending on ambient light available. All tripod and flash hits will all be chopped out, and photos still need to be cropped, etc. I was simply too tired to do all my editing last night.

We will be starting some "night series" photoshoots incorporating as many club members as possible during the next few months, so look out for dates and times, and come get your MINI shot! We will be incorporating you with your car as well as just your car.

I like the angle in the first one. We get so used to low angles, straight-on shots, and/or racing pics that these "from-above" views are refreshing.

The way you caught the reflection of your HB on the door is cool. (I'm fanatic over reflections.)

How did you meter the shots?

Blake and I have a few reflection shots we were talking about. I knew you would be the one to pick them out (more to come BTW) Thanks for the props.

Honestly, no metering. I set F-Stop to F20-22 (in this case all were F22) and set shutter to bulb and use the remote based upon "instinct" I usually take a test shot for about 10-20 seconds first just to guage the light and then time myself from there. What would you suggest for metering, in cases like this? thanks again, Juan

Well . . . I have one of these.


It's from Gossen but you can google an exposure value chart which are actually pretty good. (I printed out the Fred Parker one before.)

I've also done the instinct method before.

The only reasons to go to F/22 that I'm aware of are
1) if you want that much depth of field
2) if you want to drag out the shutter time as long as possible.

Maybe there's a third reason I'm missing.

You could run a larger F-stop and cut down on your shutter time, possibly reducing the need to even go to Bulb (and definitely cutting down on the amount of standing around).

At night you can easily shoot in the F/5.6 to F/8 range safely and have everything appear to be in focus. For instance, this was a 2 minute exposure at F/5.6.

EDIT: jeez, where's my head... I forgot to comment on the photos.

Nice work on the shot from above.

I usually use f16-18 for the night shots, but I found with the wide angle I seem to get better results and less blowing out of any lights with F20-22.

I see your example, but I am not fond of the blown out whites as compared to the shots I showed above. (no offense) Some of the shots in the alley that I will PP were taken in almost no light at all, so I guess I could of ran a larger F Stop for those, but with the amount of light in the pic I find that the longer "Burn On" time seems to allow me to fire the flash from different angles and time intervals, by walking around the car and getting the flash to define the car better. My guess is the way I am creating these pictures arent a very traditional way of doing so. I hope some of this makes sense.

I thought that was what you are getting at.

I like em

The best is yet to come, once I finish my Processing

Very cool

Lee, those pictures from Riverpark look awesome. Take care.

Thanks Armando! Hope to see you soon!

A few more:

Great pics. Thanks for sharing. Love the HB reflection

With regard to aperture (that word really needs another "a" in the middle), I find that longer exposures help bring out subtleties in the light that you don't get with the naked eye or shorter exposures. Take this one, for example:


The sky was just starting to lighten, but it looked much darker to the naked eye. Letting the shutter stay open longer brought out more detail of the sky and helped capture some colors that you wouldn't get otherwise.

I like that first shot the best, by the way. Overall, I'm not a fan of the big sparkles of light, however, like with the lamp post in the frame. I'm thinking this one might have been cool with a half-ND filter with the darkened part rotated to cover the lamp post:

I will see you guys this Thursday Morning.

Won't you be at the pre dinner Wednesday night?

Brad, that's right, I almost forgot about that, I will do my best to make it.

2 other examples: