Night Car Shots

dandaman15 · Mar 20, 2011

I dont have any lighting equipment and dont have money for such but tried shooting at night best I can with long exposure and using a flashlight to "paint" light onto the cars best I could. Its all I got for now.

Does anyone have any focusing tricks for in the dark? I always take a bunch of pictures and only a few turn out sharp and 75% are hazy/almost in focus. I can post up pictures of what Im talking about but Im sure you understand. Focusing through the view finder with little light is frustrating.

These are the best ones and even these are not 100%. I know its not dark but I still think I can get better.

Please dont be too harsh, Im just looking to learn and some more tips. Location is bland, there's not many good spots that I know of, but Im always on the look out for a good spot.

raphaelaaron · Mar 20, 2011

hey, well i commend you on knowing about timed exposures and light painting. good start so far if this is your early move into night photography.

as for the focusing issue, try closing your f stop down. move the values to like f8-f10
set your iso to something low 200 or less, and when doing shutter speed, increase the time than the time you would normally do a long exposure for. this should compensate.

another cool trick is if you have any background street lights showing in the picture, put your f stop to around f16 or f22, and set your iso to 200 or less. and go for a shutter time of around 50-75 seconds. use the B or 'bulb' setting if you need to.

Trever1t · Mar 20, 2011

location location location....

try having something a bit more interesting for a setting.

nice air-freshener

tyler_h · Mar 21, 2011

Maybe not entirely related but first thing I notice: you have a different WB in each shot...

If you have a lens with a distance scale use that to focus the the hyperfocal distance while at ~f/8. Once that is set just leave it on manual focus and just be aware of your near acceptable limit of sharpness when you are composing your shots and make some adjustments to suit.

What are your other light sources? I ask because of the shadows under the car...

dandaman15 · Mar 21, 2011

Thanks guys for all the much needed advise!

Light source is just tungsten street lights and my led flashlight. I had it set at awb too because I didnt know how my led would contrast with the yellowy street lights. I usually just change it in CS5 later though to get it just right.

Frequency · Mar 21, 2011

Car of this colour need a bright atmosphere to stand out,i think

nicktw · Mar 23, 2011

What I do for focusing at night, auto focus ur subject, then switch to LCD view, digital zoom in say 10x on the screen, and manual focus in from there till its sharp. U get a lot better quality that way. Hope it helps.

EDIT: I just said 10x but that's for subjects further away, really just zoom in to say the headlight while its in LCD dispusing the zoom button, and manual focus in on that.