tit-I put the camera on the ground quite often! Some times it works out nicely

 

....Sometimes it's the only way....

 

Earth, the world cheapest, sturdiest (except for CA) and most ubiquitous camera mount.

 

wow, a lot of great nighttime pics in this thread.

here's my contribution (shot of the lake in my subdivision). not much experience shooting at night (in fact only shot one pic - this one) i do want to shoot more. as someone mentioned earlier, the world looks much cleaner at night

 

Here's a new one

And a slightly older one I haven't posted yet:

 

I will have to get OmToast's MINI in on the shooting next time...

 

A quick shot I took the other weekend.

 

I have to confess, I had a complete blast working on the April photo contest. It really sucked only being able to enter one photo and I had a really difficult time just picking one.

I gave out some details on my safe $15 DIY camera mount on this thread in case anyone is interested: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ad.php?t=67185 I used a 2 sec self time, cable release, and I have the arms of an orangutang.

I'm starting to get the hang of PS smart sharpening post image resize, let me know if these still look oversharpened. However, I'm really struggling with color shifts when saving for web. I've changed my color settings in PS to use sRBG, monitor is calibrated, but I still get a shift from a soft slight magenta to a strong teal blue. I'm going to recalibrate the monitor tonight, but I'm not holding my breath. My prints once profiled to the lab come back looking exactly like my monitor. Any suggestions would be welcome!

Anyway, enough complaining, onto some of my favorite night motion photos! First up, got fustrated with color shifts, so I just went nuts with the RAW conversion and had some fun. My wife really digs the red on this one. Illuminated from the rear by a cop's red spot light?


I also tried using a flash mounted to the camera at -3EV setting. I wasn't too happy with the results because the white balance for the inside of the car was radically different than for the view outside the windows.


In the local mall parking lot taking a turn a little too tight and scaring my wife...


I really liked the motion in this shot. One of my Hawaiian friends thinks there is a ghost in this one. FWIW, Hawaiians love a good ghost story. For anyone who knows San Jose, this is the entrance to San Pedro Sq and yes, that's a Starplucks logo on the right.


Another friend commented on this one "wicked night motion ala a Mitsubishi techno/hip-hop beat; only thing
missing is the retarded chick dancing inside the car". He knows I wouldn't be caught dead in a 3 star car, but I'll take it as a compliment.


Both of these are also taken from downtown SJ on a pizza run.





Cheers!

 

Those rock, speednut! I passed on this month's contest due to a creative blackout and too much going on, but I think I'm going to try some of the techniques used by you and others for submissions.

 

 

speednut: the Starplucks shot, with the "scratched" sunroof is cool.

 

And the heavens open up.....AAAHHHHHHHHHHHH

 

speednut...those are awesome....!

 

///ACS330Ci, that image has been driving me nuts all night. Ever have something look so familiar, yet you just can't place it!

My brain fart ended an hour later while catching up on F1 via TiVo...



Cheers!

 

Speednut. those are some great shots. I really like the one with the ghost in it.

///ACS330Ci

nice shoot too I think someone needs to take another trip to Germany

 

Blalor, one thing I learned in the multitude of photos I shot was to have lots of things close by on the side of the road. While shooting, I'd pass by an old barn or a lake or something else that looked interesting. But unless it was directly by the roadside, it just looked like a amateur blurry photo of a barn, lake, etc. I found my best photos was when I was on a narrow twisty road and had trees blanketing the sides of the road. During the day, I put a ND filter on the lens (#2 I think) and set the camera up for aperture priority, f/22. Shutter speeds were ~1/10-1/4 of a second. All of my night shots were done on manual at 1.5 seconds f/4. I stopped every so often to check the histogram to ensure I was getting exposures in the right ballpark (a few over and under was expected). I kept shooting lots of photos until I got what I was looking for (digital photography is such a godsend for it's instant feedback and no more changing film canisters after every 37 photos!). I hope this info can be handy for you and I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Kurt, I really like the lines on that photo too. I was still using v1.0 of my DIY mount with the boxed AL tube which flexed too much causing the lines to be jagged and the road is not too smooth. Then again, I could never be called a "smooth" driver either and I'd never want to change the Mini's stiff suspension. FWIW, I'd love to be driving the Prescott road shown in your April contest photo! Very nice!

Cheers!

 

Holy crap speednut, those photos are awesome!! My favorite is the San Pedro Sq one. Great job.

 

Those are very nice, Speednut! No, they don't look oversharpened to me at all. I think they look fine the way the are but if you want a pop of flash for the inside of the car, you can put gels on the strobe to try to match the white balance with the outside or at least get a balance that you like.

Great stuff!

Mark

 

That's so old skool it just might work.

Another way to skin the same cat: shoot RAW, pop the flash with no gel, then adjust the same image twice (once for the exterior, once for the interior, customize whitebalance and exposure of each as needed), overlay the layers, add in a mask to cut away parts of the top layer.

 

That's me!

You kids today and your computer machines... .

Mark

 

MarkS, thanks for the great suggestion! I've never used gels before though; I'm still too much of an amateur, especially around flashes. I've done before almost what DiD suggests, but...

DiD, I'm with you until "add in a mask to cut away parts of the top layer" which sounds better than using the eraser as I typically do on the top layer. Can you give me just a little bit more detail on this step?

Cheers!

 

Create a layer mask & paint in the channel

 

I feel you pain! I sometimes could get 38 frames.
That road is just below my house. So I can't blame the scenery for losing this month!

 

There's a "How To" in the current issue of PC Photo about this.

 

Nice shots in here! Just getting back into photography myself! Love the night shots! Here's one of mine. Behind my work place - two blue floor lights to help enhance the electric blue.