Camera Labs

So I'm going to auto show this weekend and the light conditions are pretty poor there. I was wondering if I can get some tips on the best way to adjust white balance and making proper adjustments to take natural looking pictures? Any help is much appreciate it and thank you

PS I'm taking it with 40D and IS 17 - 55 if it makes any difference and with tripod of cause

Hey AkulaX1,

I'm guessing that the lighting there will be fluorescent or incandescent and you might be able to get cleaner whites by adjusting your white-balance accordingly.

Assuming you're doing hand-held shots, you might benefit from forcing ISO800 or even ISO1600. However, at 1600 you might get too much noise for comfort.

Keeping a low F-number in Aperture Priority mode may also be a way to try, if you're mindful of the depth of field.

With a tripod, going ISO800 and letting the camera do the rest, might be the easiest way - provided you can keep moving car-admirers out of the frame.

I hope you'll share a few shots with us - and good luck with the shots

Cheers!

Well not sure about car admires They tend to see you take a picture and still manage to stay still

But other than that great advice! What about depth of field? Can you recommend what settings to use for focused subject blurred background and then complete focus on all surroundings? I seem to be still having some problems there and there with that. I'm a bit new to SLR cameras

And yes of cause I'll post up pics

Hey AkulaX1,

The higher the F-number, the more shallow your depth-of-field becomes.

A good way to remember is a practical experiment.

Sit at your desk and line up two objects - a cup and a lamp for example - one behind the other. Say half a foot's distance. Put your face close to the one in the foreground, close one eye completely. Look at the foreground object and start squinting your eye gradually and you will see how the background object becomes more and more fuzzy.

That's how your camera works. All you need to remember is - counter-intuitively - that the higher number equals MORE squinting (smaller aperture). The large number signifies, mathematically, more light drop-off because of a smaller aperture/hole that the light shines through.

Anyway, nevermind my harebrained experiments here..lol. If you either set your lovely Canon 40D to A-mode on your command-dial (Aperture priority Mode), you can manually set the aperture. Keep in mind that you need longer exposures for high F-numbers.

Alternately you can try out the also excellent "Portrait" mode - again using your command dial - and see what that yields. For extreme shallow depth-of-field you can also dial to the Macro mode (probably a flower-icon on your dial) if you want a very narrow focus plane.

Hope this makes sense even if it was a bit long-winded

Cheers!

Just to avoid any confusion here I think you meant to say "The smaller the F-number...". f/4 has a shallower depth of field than f/16.

There is an excellent tutorial on Depth of Field here at the CambridgeInColour site. To quote briefly "Larger apertures (smaller F-stop number) and closer focal distances produce a shallower depth of field". A couple of Gordon's workshops over at DSLR Tips concern this subject.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Ech!! Thanks Bob

Excelent advice from both and that is a very good write up thanks again!

I'll refresh this topic and see if I get any hits, otherwise I'll add a new post in a day or 2.

First off, is that your Z06 in your picture?

Now to the camera stuff.

I'm curious about the depth of field here. I was recommended by another photographer to use Aperture Priority also, but was wondering. How do you get the car to come in clear when using strong angles up to the car, the distance can be so "long" in the picture that it would seem to blur the second half of the car. I'm not sure this is what I always want to do. I mean if the car was at a straight shot, like a portrait, then I could see this working. but if at a low angle close to the car.

Maybe I will just have to play with the F number to see what ends up good. Then the light levels come into play and avoid blurring.

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Canon 40D kit Lens 28-135mm IS, Canon 50mm F/1.8, 10-22mm, 100 2.8 macro, 580 Ex.

Hi csmonte,

It is true that with an aperture of roughly f/4 and below, an angled shot focused on the headlight will put the second half of the car into blurriness. This is inevitable though with such f-numbers.
If you'd want to extend your depth of field though but keep the same shutter-speeds (low-light ability) you can bump up the ISO as this will allow you to close the aperture a little.

In the end it is all about knowing the kind of shot you wish to capture and to think about what settings to use and what compromises you might need to make. Hope this answers you questions

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Nikon D40x | AF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II | AF-S 55-200mm f/4.5-5.6 VR

Don't forget that there are the additional factors of how far away you are from the object and your focal distance which will affect the DoF.

How did your car shoot go, AkulaX1? How did you manage white balance in the end?

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Nikonian

http://www.edtangphotography.com
http://journeysintophotography.blogspot.com/

True Photoj, it slipped my mind.. thanks for adding

csmonte, feel free to share some shots if you'd like!

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Nikon D40x | AF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II | AF-S 55-200mm f/4.5-5.6 VR

here is a few I took, I took these in shutter Priority because when we were driving I was trying to get the wheels/background blurry. And I didn't acually change it to Av because I didn't think the blurring backgrounds would of worked right with such a large object.

These pictures I accually adjusted a bit, I've an extreme amature in editing but did the best I could. I added sharpening and touched a bit with contrast and brightness.

And this was a Ford Mustang Car cruise so most are mustangs and some other mostly american cars.

These were a few of the best of over 100 pics

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Canon 40D kit Lens 28-135mm IS, Canon 50mm F/1.8, 10-22mm, 100 2.8 macro, 580 Ex.