advice on taking cruising/car pics?

ISI_Stang06

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tomorrow im gonna be heading out w/my car club to the beach and all of us will be cruising together, and was wondering if you guys could give me some advice?

1. should i just stay in shutter mode when taking pics on the cruise since the cars will be moving?...though we'll be going kinda slow
2. what shutter speed would be recommended on the cruise? to capture both motion and shutter speed to get a still shot?
3. when we're all parked, should i just switch to aperture mode or try to get a feel for manual?
4. what other settings would be benificial for both parts of the event? (whitebalance, exposure, iso, etc...)

thanks for taking the time to help me out guys :hail:, really hoping to get some info before tomorrow morning when we take off.
 
1. You've got many options here. With the D80 and its Auto ISO feature you can use manual mode, select a shutter speed of your choice (1/200th maybe) and an aperture of your choice (to keep enough of the moving car in focus) and let Auto ISO adjust itself for exposure. If you're moving at the same speed of the other cars moving you may get away with slower shutter speeds to get more of a mood of motion. If you don't want to use manual with Auto ISO i'd just use Shutter Priority.

2. As above but it depends on your speeds etc, just take a few samples and experiment.

3. Aperture priority would be best here, quicker option i think.

4. For static shots i'd just keep your ISO as low as possible. Moving shots i wouldn't worry too much, the D80 is fairly good noise wise up to ISO 800 (You can see my thread in the General Gallery "BSB Superbikes in George Square".. ISO's went quite high here (max set to 1600)). Auto WB should be ok and shoot in RAW if you can. You may need to set your Exposure Compensation as you may find skies blowing out etc.

There's a lot of ways to do stuff you'll find your own way i'm sure.
 
ill probably have to work w/the exposure on account it will be extremely sunny w/bright blue skies and clouds.
why would shooting raw be better?
i was playing w/my camera right now, and when selecting shutter speed, i tried checking for 200 but it jumps from 250 to 180. or when you say 1/200th means when the camera says 20? the 2 w/ the little 0

thanks for the advice, really appreciate it
 
nah it will be between the 180 and the 250 setting. You'll need to change your step in your menu (Custom Setting Menu (the pencil) Number 10, EV step, you could put it to 1/3 step if you like). 1/200th is just a rough guess, you could start there and change it around to suit.

Shooting in RAW gives you larger room for error really, in white balance and exposure. Only problem with RAW is your FPS will start to slow down after a few shots in burst mode.. I got 3FPS but only 5 frames until it started to slow down..

Another thing you might want to do while shooting moving cars is put your Autofocus onto AF-C.
 
by larger room for error in RAW, do you mean that the chances of making a mistake are greater? because then wouldnt it just make more since to shoot in jpeg?

oh i have another question if you dont mind. i know how to move the focus point in the viewfinder to the position i want, but how do i pic multiple points at once?

and by switching to auto-c, doesnt that prevent me from taking a pic if the camera cant get into focus?
 
Chances of making a mistake are the same whether you shoot in RAW of JPEG, jsut that if you shoot in RAW there's more chance you can recover from exposure problems or white balance problems.

In custom menu 02 (AF-Area mode) you can change it to Auto Area AF. I never use these though, i normally use Single Area and move the point around but that's just a personal pref.

Using AF-C will take the shot regardless, AF-S won't take a shot if it hasn't focused on anything.
 
how do i switch to AF-C? i cant find that anywhere in the settings? or do you mean choosing between the AF & M switch in the front of the camera and switching the lens to M?

and what optimizing do you use? normal, soft, vivid?
 
Optimisation i leave on Normal, can do the rest in RAW adjustments when importing to Photoshop.

The AF button on the top at the right hand side? press that to change your AF mode. You can press and let go to change "one touch" or you can hold it in and flick the rear command dial to change. AF-S is good for static objects, AF-C for moving.. generally.

Using a circular polariser is a good idea with cars, taking out reflections and/or changing them to bring out the lines better - just something else if you haven't already got one/use one..
 
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All of the suggestions are right on for what I see but there is one more that I have to add: RTFM
 
For rolling shots, I would have recommended something in the 1/50th - 1/30th range to induce enough motion blur to the background/foreground and add some motion to the wheels. Interested to see what you came up with though.
 
Yeah in a car taking shots of other cars should be easy enough to get slow shutter speeds like that.. i like to start off fast and work my way back (if possible) - better off getting some sharp shots than some blurred ones initially.
 

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