Oh that's lovely.
What an amazingly splendidly lovely car this is, and i'm lucky enough to know the owner
Jo, I've known you since what? we were seventeen? mm
there a bouts, that long, and now it's a long time.
We're going to use this car to remake one of the first films we ever did.
The film i'm talking about is on YouTube,
go and search for 'how to photograph a fast car' and you should find a film where we make
this image.
Now this was done some time ago and this was the very first film we ever did
and i know i left out some crucial information.
If you're some one who's seen this on YouTube and you're frustrated by that,
this one's dedicated to you.
The key to getting movement into something
is your shutter speed,
you need a slow shutter speed to create movement to create the blurry effect.
But obviously we don't want to blur Jo or her car, so
the camera and the car have got to move together nice and smoothly.
If you're a proper car photographer doing it for a living, you might have a
rig made out of steel which will clamp in just underneath the car and come out here
and you can mount the camera on it, and move it to where you want it,
it'll be very sturdy and very solid.
But if you don't want to go to the expense of doing that, you can use something as simple as
a little tripod.
All i'm going to do is literally sit it on the wing of the car
you may notice i have little soft rubber feet here because the last thing we wanna do is damage the paint work.
This is original plaint work too, this car has never been restored, is that right?
yeah, never been restored.
I've got some little bits of tape on here, because i want to make sure
that none of the little
cornery bits of plastic actually touch the paint work
either.
So, i'm going to sit the tripod on those bits of tape like that, and I've already
kind of got it ready, there we go.
And you'll also notice that I've got a cable release going on here too because
the last thing i want to do is to vibrate the camera during the
exposure.
Movement is all about shutter speed,
you need a slow shutter speed in order to create movement or a fast shutter speed
in order to freeze it, to stop it, to get rid of it.
Now the alter shutter speed for this shot, i reckon is about half a
second.
so that's the first thing i'm gonna do is shoot in manual mode for this
really.
so you've got full control.
i'm going in to the camera
and i'm just gonna set
a half a second, actually i'm not i'm going to go for a one second exposure okay.
One second the shutter will open,
stuff will move and
then the shutter will close.
Now i can't tell you what aperture you're gonna need because i don't know
what light you're shooting in,
and this is crucial you've obviously got to get the exposure correct.
We're shooting in the evening
and it's a bit of an over cast sort of an evening and we're under trees,
and this tunnel here
is brilliant because it blocks some of the sky reflections
it makes it a little bit darker so we can use the slow shutter speed and it
gives us plenty of things to blur in the picture. If you try this out on an open
prairie somewhere or something like that without stuff either side of the road,
there's nothing to blur is there?
you won't get much of an effect.
Try and do it somewhere a bit quite so you don't get in everyone's way,
there's a few cars coming through here
but the crucial thing is stuff either side of the road.
so we've set our one second exposure
now i need to set
the aperture in that will work with that exposure.
so if i go
into
my
info button up, so i can see the light meter
as you an see I've set a one second exposure
at F ten and it's saying it's over exposed.
So i need to change, that's the wrong one, here we go, my aperture
until the light meter is about in the middle.
This is a very dark green car, cameras think that everything is mid grey
so actually i want it to be a little bit tiny bit darker than the cameras light meter
thinks i do.
If you don't know what i'm talking about you need to go and take a look at the exposure films.
so i'm just gonna change my, I've done it again wrong one, there we go, i'm
going to F twenty which is just under exposed very very very
slightly,
because i want to get the exposure right.
Now in these lighting conditions, i'm using an iso
of two hundred, which is pretty low, so I've got nice fine quality and good
colours.
As i say if you have more light going on here,
you might not be able to get a one second exposure at F twenty with
two hundred iso.
You might need to go to one hundred iso to make the camera less sensitive.
Even then, that might not be enough and you might need to use
something like a neutral density filter,
I've got one here.
This is like a pair of sunglasses, it's you kinda put it over the lens
and it just cuts light out that's all it does, there's no colour in it.
This is a cokin you can get lee which are absolutely brilliant at it i have to say,
and it has a little bracket which slots on the front, you slide it in and it will cut out the
light.
It will allow you to set
slow exposures.
If you don't need to stop out a huge amounts of light you can sometimes do
this with a polarizing filter because that will cut out two slots of light on it's own,
as it is in these conditions i don't need to.
so we've got
a one second exposure at F twenty,
i'm using a ten millimeter lens because there's lot's of width going on here
and i want these beautiful louvers on the bonnet
which is running back here to Jo who is going to be in the driving seat.
Now your driver has got to keep really still.
Right, so Jo is going to sit there, and she's not gonna move a muscle, she's going to
going to be in a driving kind of position
you're kind of be thinking well if you've seen the other film
why is she going to be in a driving sort of position?
wait, the moment is coming.
We're pretty much ready, the last thing i want to do is to make sure that
my camera is set in mirror lock-up, to minimize vibrations.
Mirror lock up means i can press the shutter once, it lifts the mirror out
the way and locks it in position, that's for moving vibrations from the camera
and when i press it again
it will open the shutter to let the light in
and that's when all the magic happens.
So Jo, i'm going to ask you, can you put your fleece jacket on please
to look the part, it's a bit of a muggy kind of a warm,
evening and Jo's got a
genuine fleecy jacket.
Very hairy and really itchy.
but it is kinda of you know makes it all work, makes it look the part.
So our camera's ready, we've got that all set up,
we know all of the exposures right,
Jo we've got no traffic on the road so that's brilliant. If you
just try and keep your eyes on probably Jane.
Don't look at the camera, and keep really really still.
Now all we have to do is let the brake off, and i'm gonna
yeah let's get it rolling it is not push the car, there we go let's get it rolling, it doesn't have to go that fast that should be enough.
and press the shutter,
shutter opens
it stays open for a second and then, it
closes.
Thanks Jo.
Do you see what i mean about your camera falling off it's incredibly unlikely at that
sort of speed.
and even if id did, you're here
just catch it just grab hold of it.
So let's have a look and see what our
shot
looks like.
Wake my camera up.
here we go,
yeah that's pretty cool i don't know if you can see it in the back there but
it looks really nice, doesn't it. That is such a simple and easy way to get some
fast motion blur into a car shot.
Can i go in your car Jo? haha