Best Camera Settings for Auto Show?

"twinturbobmw" (twinturbobmw) 01/31/2014 at 19:22 • Filed to: Photography

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If you're a photographer, you know shooting without a tripod in extreme lighting is difficult without the right equipment. So what is the best way to get the best shot in bad, auto show lighting? This includes exterior and interior shots.

(Example of what I mean)

SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman > twinturbobmw 01/31/2014 at 19:24

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That's a nice 337 E92 M3

Thomas Nourse > twinturbobmw 01/31/2014 at 19:25

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My answer is usually a faster lens (at the expense of depth of field) and higher ISO (and pray that Lightroom can take care of the noise). For the interior shots, a makeshift diffuser for your pop-up flash (if you don't have an aftermarket one) could serve you well...

4muddyfeet - bare knuckle with an EZ30 > twinturbobmw 01/31/2014 at 19:26

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Depends on the camera really, what are you using?

JGrabowMSt > twinturbobmw 01/31/2014 at 19:26

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If the lighting is super low, then without a nice wide open lens, you're asking for a miracle. Crank the ISO and buy a monopod on your way there.

Unless your hands are super steady, try not to shoot slower than 1/100 to avoid camera shake, wide open as your lens allows, and use the ISO to balance it out.

Practice makes perfect. If your kitchen is a fairly dim room, or you can turn half the lights off, makes for a great place to practice, or basement, or dusk/twilight outside. Try not to chimp too much at the show, and use your cameras meter to it's fullest ability. Tv mode might help.

Thomas Nourse > twinturbobmw 01/31/2014 at 19:28

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Also, practice keeping a steady hand. I use a lot of the techniques I learned in the military during rifle training and I've found I can shoot as slow as 1/13 and still end up with a sharp shot.

twinturbobmw > 4muddyfeet - bare knuckle with an EZ30 01/31/2014 at 19:32

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Sony A58.

4muddyfeet - bare knuckle with an EZ30 > twinturbobmw 01/31/2014 at 19:42

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Then I have to agree with other posts regarding a good, fast lens (f2 or quicker) and test shots playing with ISO and shutter speed to eliminate judder and shake. The sensor in your camera is it's slightly limiting feature for best picture. It uses a smaller sensor than 'pro' DSLR's, therefore records less light and more noise than a typical full frame sensor. Saying this, knowing your camera can almost remove any disadvantage of this. If you need a fast lens while staying within a modest budget then a wide angle prime lens (no zoom) is a cost effective way of getting crisp, clean low-light shots. Paired with a flash gun which has a diffuser on it to limit glare then your only barrier your knowledge of your own camera

Victorious Secret > twinturbobmw 01/31/2014 at 22:16

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F2.8 or better, or a very modern camera that can take ISO3200 like a champ and not screw up with excessive noise.

Icemanmaybeirunoutofthetalents > twinturbobmw 01/31/2014 at 22:37

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Gym (for better stability)
Monopod
Bracing
Iso
Large aperture lens
Flash
Prayers
In that order.

Tentacle, Dutchman, drives French > twinturbobmw 02/01/2014 at 01:36

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You've got a decent camera to start with, with sensor-shift image stabilisation and reasonably high ISO settings. A few pointers:

Test each ISO value before you go to the car show. Find out what level of image noise is acceptable in your final product . Shoot RAW if you can because software like DxO or Photoshop is better at removing noise while keeping detail than your camera. And you have more control over how strong the filtering is. The amount of color (chroma) noise and brightness (luminance) noise you can have in an image differs based on what you use it for, print or web.

Really important: Get an external flash gun with tilt and shivel head and an omnibounce. The means to aim your flash towards a suitable surface to bounce light from, for indirect flash lighting can be a life saver. It gets even more interesting if you can trigger the flash remotely, so you can put the flash on its stand and use it off camera. You need the omnibounce or diffuser if there is no surface available to bounce from. (But you'll be amazed how much light an external flash can bounce from a 20ft high ceiling!)

Having said that, you'll need to know how to get the metering right. Mostly, I use manual mode, set the shutter time to what I need to keep camera shake away, set aperture and ISO to meter about one stop underexposed and let the camera decide, based on the amount of return light of the pre-flash, how bright the flash will fire.

As a rough guide, shutter time should be equal to your effective focal lenght. Longer focal length = shorter exposure time. Shooting at 50 mm, with crop factor 1.6, means you are in the 1/80th ballpark. Shoot at 30 m and you can use 1/50th. Given your camera has build-in stabilisation, you can likely do better, 30 mm at 1/20th and 50 mm at 1/40th, 100 mm at 1/80th. It depends on how proficient you are at holdings steady.

Bounce and expose right, and no one will know you've actually used flash.

iforgotmyburnerkeyonce > twinturbobmw 02/01/2014 at 15:32

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Fast lens, manual mode (use the spot metering for specific points if you have to), and shoot in RAW and slightly overexposed (shooting overexposed without clipping the highlights, then editing back down to proper exposure will get rid of a lot of noise, if that's an issue you're having).

AAsearles > twinturbobmw 02/01/2014 at 22:18

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I brought my Canon 50D to NAIAS last week. For me, the lens is critical - use a walk-around lens with a big zoom range, so you can compose any shot you want from wherever you happen to be, without swapping lenses. I use an EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 w/image stabilization. I use the aperture preferred setting and keep f-stop at minimum, ISO 400-800 range to avoid blurring without using a flash. Unfortunately, they won't let you take a tripod into the show, so image stabilization really helps here. That's about it. From wide angle to telephoto, you can shoot fast from anywhere with great results. Oh, get some BIG, fast CF cards so you can shoot all day without reloading the "roll". I use two 16GB SanDisk Ultra cards (wish I had 32s sometimes).

I have a f/1.4 prime lens that I brought along for really cool depth of field effects, and if I were going for art prints to hang on the wall I might have used it, but I wanted to cover the entire show in 4-5 hours, so really didn't have time to compose these kind of shots. I wanted to capture multiple angles of every vehicle that caught my attention, and the 18-200mm let me do that.