halo lighting capture..

[Andrewe92]

hey guys im very very new to photography in general so take it easy on me. I have a canon rebel t3 just for reference. what is the best way to capture a solid ring of light on the bmw halo rings. in other words which area of photography iso ? aperture ? and can someone offer up more tips on what settings are great for daylight car photos and as well as night shots

[druu]

you can't have a long exposure to get a halo, and may need to stack layers to get it depending on your lighting setup.

Day time you should have an easy time since you have ample light, but at night you will need a quick shutter, which means you need a light source (aka off camera flash), Which from the sound of your post may be a more complicated photo setup than you have.

[ddk632]

Good advice.

One note on the long exposure: What I do at night, or dusk, is use a long exposure and then turn on the car lights (with the remote) for the last second or so of the exposure. Works for me. This is a trial and error process...

The trick is, since lights are so bright, to have them turned on for only a small fraction of the total exposure (assuming you want the rest of the exposure to be exposed for the background, rest of the car, etc.)

Here's an example of the long exposure and lights at the end method I described:


Vicious Beauty by ddk632, on Flickr

Another way is a really short exposure (where the rest of the frame will be underexposed but your halos look nice and neat and not washed out) and then bring up shadows a lot. This will have the drawback of lots more noise than you may want, though, which I suspect will be an issue with the T3.

OP:
To answer your question on what area of photography, it's a bit tricky. Read Understanding Exposure by Brian Peterson to... Understand exposure

The short answer is it's not any one setting, because exposure is combined by ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. The issue for halos isn't picking the right setting or the correct exposure; it's dealing with extreme dynamic range (really bright headlights vs darker rest of the scene) which no camera can deal with without some trickery like flash with short exposure or the method I described. The idea is to even the exposure amongst the lights and the rest of the scene.

Finally, I am not a fan of taking two shots (one exposed for car, one exposed for halos) and then combining the layers. This is because it's extremely difficult to make it look natural. The lights will brighten up parts of the scene that aren't easily blended and the lighting can appear to be photoshopped ... Which it is.

Hope this is helpful

[mreed]

^^ Nice shot and cool technique!

[Andrewe92]

awesome!! thank you for the extended answers I think i'll give myself time before i even bother with halo shoots. still getting into using my canon rebel t3

[druu]

Originally Posted by ddk632

Good advice.

One note on the long exposure: What I do at night, or dusk, is use a long exposure and then turn on the car lights (with the remote) for the last second or so of the exposure. Works for me. This is a trial and error process...

The trick is, since lights are so bright, to have them turned on for only a small fraction of the total exposure (assuming you want the rest of the exposure to be exposed for the background, rest of the car, etc.)

Here's an example of the long exposure and lights at the end method I described:


Vicious Beauty by ddk632, on Flickr

Another way is a really short exposure (where the rest of the frame will be underexposed but your halos look nice and neat and not washed out) and then bring up shadows a lot. This will have the drawback of lots more noise than you may want, though, which I suspect will be an issue with the T3.

OP:
To answer your question on what area of photography, it's a bit tricky. Read Understanding Exposure by Brian Peterson to... Understand exposure

The short answer is it's not any one setting, because exposure is combined by ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. The issue for halos isn't picking the right setting or the correct exposure; it's dealing with extreme dynamic range (really bright headlights vs darker rest of the scene) which no camera can deal with without some trickery like flash with short exposure or the method I described. The idea is to even the exposure amongst the lights and the rest of the scene.

Finally, I am not a fan of taking two shots (one exposed for car, one exposed for halos) and then combining the layers. This is because it's extremely difficult to make it look natural. The lights will brighten up parts of the scene that aren't easily blended and the lighting can appear to be photoshopped ... Which it is.

Hope this is helpful

Not sure why i never thought of turning them on at last second. Cool trick indeed.