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A settings question.

S

Smititty

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 14, 2002
Messages
1,720
Hey guys, I'm going to be going to the autoshow on Saturday and was wondering what type of settings would be good. I have a Canon Powershot A75 and I know that they usually have the place lit up like a lightbulb. So what settings should provide for the best close up shots.

Thanks in advance guys.

Smitty
 
auto shows are relatively poor conditions to shoot in, the lighting is awful(dim - varying colors, spotlights, etc) with the cars so highly polished you get the brights spots on the cars blown out or metered against - so the pic is dark.

My Advice:
boost your iso up to the highest that you can stand - you will need it. You will probably also need relatively long shutter speeds because its dim. If there is a guardrail / post around the cars (the nice ones will anyway) try and brace the camera against it to hold it steady. Additionally, snapping several in sequence with the continuous shot(?) mode sometimes helps with unsteady hands - im not sure why, but it does.

Always review your shots to make sure the lighting came out decent, so you dont get some washed out or dim pics you thought came out good later. Take pics from every angle, some just work better than others.

If that camera has raw mode, and you are comfortable working with it, use that, it may enable you to tweak the exposure to rescue some pictures.
 
Thanks for the reply. My cameras highest ISO is 400 and longest shutter speed is 1/1250 s. I'm hoping this will yeild a quality shot.

If anyone has anymore advice, I'll gladly take it.

Smitty
 
Smititty said:
Thanks for the reply. My cameras highest ISO is 400 and longest shutter speed is 1/1250 s. I'm hoping this will yeild a quality shot.

If anyone has anymore advice, I'll gladly take it.

Smitty
Click to expand...

longer will be a bigger fraction, 1/1250 is very fast, and you won't take any good shots with that. you're going to need something like 1/60, 1/30 or below if you have a tripod and are taking shots with NO motion in them at all.
 
Auto-shows are easy and fun to shoot as there's great subjects everywhere!

I disagree with pumping up the ISO. You'll introduce unwanted noise into the pictures that are prevalent at higher ISO. This is not great as you'll be shooting pictures of things with beautiful colours (the manufacturers bring out their best paint jobs, eh?!). The noise will really break up the colours in a paint job.

With your A75, I think it's easy peazy. The tricks in a nutshell:
1. set yourself to Tungsten white balance,
2. set yourself to 100 ISO,
3. do not use the flash,
4. bring a tripod,

Here's why (the long answer):
- The tripod will let you not care about how long the shutter speed is, and still get a correct exposure with a lower ISO. Don't worry about carrying it around looking like a geek, your pictures will be better than the dude pointing it at the reflecty paint and using a flash. :)

- Not using the flash will get you a better average exposure over the scene, and you can also have fun recording nice specular from the overhead lights. :)

- ISO 100 will get you a nice even image. Point and shoots from the A75's year typically start breaking down about ISO 400.

- Tungsten white balance because those huge overhead conference center lights are usually great big halogen (and thuz quartz temperature-like) lamps. Do a couple tests though, just to satisfy yourself. The difference can be seen below:


chrysler! (daylight balanced)


subaru! (tungsten balanced)

Geeky details: These pictures were taken with an S40, bit older than your A75. I was shooting slides on this day too, and they turned out way better than these, but these are good examples of what I'm talking about. :) Notice how in the Chrysler shot, the 'whites' and 'greys' have a definite yellow hue to them? This is fixed using Tungsten white balance as shown in the Subaru shot: the greys and whites are fixed. Basically, Tungsten balancing just adds blue to the image. When you hear people talking about "tungsten balanced film," that's what they're referring to: the film imulsion has more blue bias to correct for indoor lighting.

With all that being said, if the lights throw a blue or green hue (fluorescent), set your balance to fluorescent. ;)

Shooting tips: Crop nice and tight, choose interesting perspectives (try up down and all around!), and be patient in getting people out of the picture you want. Generally if you have a tripod, people will notice and are more likely to step out of the way while you shoot. Detail shots are good too: get right in on fog lamps, logos, engines and intercoolers, wheels and brakes... you get the idea.

Happy shooting and hope this helps!!
 
Well thanks for all the help guys but it looks as though I won't be going this year. :( Girls, well, they're morons.

Smitty
 
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