Night photography

Josh220

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Last semester I took a photography class, which totally killed my desire to shoot. I decided to keep it strictly as a hobby so I can go back to enjoying it. I am back, and here is my dilemma...

I shoot a lot of pictures of vehicles (mainly mine, but they are all Toyota 4Runners during off-road trips). I have most aspects of night photography down well, but the one area I still can't get is bright lights. Headlights, for example, always come out as big stars which ruin the shot. The only way I have been able to avoid it is by shooting with a smaller aperture or faster shutter speed, but that underexposes everything else. If I meter for something besides the lights, then they become overexposed.

Any tips of how to capture bright lights when it's completely dark out without leaving the rest of the image underexposed?
 
strobe it ?

i think they use more than 1 strobes for car photography

I thought about that but I only have one strobe currently. It's difficult because most of us have a LOT of forward facing lights. Many of them have lights on their bumper and roof. I have 2 huge ones on my bumper which are very hard to photograph at night due to the amount of light output:

DSC00553.jpg
 
If your shutter times are long enough, you could manually strobe the lights and dial in the perfect exposure relative to the darker areas of the scene.
 
You SHOULD be using a three light system. (Maybe even stick in a vid light).
 

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