2009 Ferrari California and I've got pics!

great cars..

mmm my mate has a F430... not a fan of the California to be honest

I'd take a C5 Z06 and keep the $100k change

wow, nice picss!

fuckin dope

f150 are sick!!

Beautiful cars.I'd choose the Ford.

I heard C5 Corvettes are fun

great photos, did you shoot?

Ferrari and Alfa both owned by Fiat who now also has a controlling share of Chrysler.
Could mean really great cars coming from Chrysler in the future.. or perhaps american made Alfa's to hit the ol hwy 66 in a few years.

Thanks!

I took these pics and only post pictures I've taken myself

There were also a few prime examples from the genius of Carroll Shelby

I love the Maserati or cobra

I could get used to a ride like that

Yes sir, same here

do you mind sharing your technique ?
some of those cars are moving but your photos are sharp and crisp.

Makes me want to get back to work...

I love the downward facing instrument needles on the Ferrari.

I wanted to get pictures of the cars being driven so I positioned myself where they would exit and stood where I would have two chances to take two different looking pics.

The first chance is when they pulled up to the stop sign and were completely stopped. Since motion doesn't come into play here, I decided that I would blur out the background by opening the lens as wide as I could. I was using a Canon 70 - 200 2.8 and this helps to keep the background from being too distracting and it makes the car stand out as well. Standing up or getting low to the ground can also have a dramatic effect on the composition.

Here's an example of the car stopped.



Once the cars pulled out I had the opportunity to capture the motion in the picture. This is done by panning the camera with the car. Two important things needed for this is a slow shutter speed and taking the picture at the right instance.

For a shutter speed I used 1/160 sec which gives pretty good results. If you go slower you will get more motion blur but your success rate will drop. It really sucks when you have only one chance to get a shot and you miss it. A good place to practice and experiment is at the race track where the cars go by about 200 times. You can go a little faster with the shutter speed but the effect will be less.

When to take the picture while panning is very important. The best results come when the car is at it's closest point to your position.

Say you are standing on the curb facing straight out to the street. Keep your feet still and twist your body to the side to see the car coming down the road. If you were to take the picture now it would be out of focus because the car is traveling towards you and your shutter speed is too slow to freeze it. The same thing applies after it has passed you.

So what you need to do is pan the camera with the car and take the picture when it passes directly in front of you. At that moment the car isn't moving towards or away from you, it's " stopped " if only for a fraction of a second and that along with panning the camera allows you to " Freeze " the car. The wheels are still moving and the slow shutter speed allows the motion to show. The panning of the camera blurs the background.

Here's a shot of this old Ferrari that drove by before I had time to switch my settings to capture the speed blur. As you can see the fast shutter speed froze everything and the car looks parked.



To get the speed shots you need to combine a slow shutter speed and picking the right time to take the picture. Of course there's room for lots of experimenting with some very cool results but that's a good starting point. Hope this helps and some others can give it a try on anything that moves and post their results.

Here's a shot of an Audi R8 and even though it got past the sweet spot I still got a usable shot which worked out well since the rear end is so distinctive.

hot cars, love them all

Here's a few more pics from last saturday and the nice collection of cars.

This is one of three Camaros that showed up



This one still had the sticker on it if anyone is interested



This guy was giving rides to a few lucky people in his Lamborghini Superleggera



Hard to find any fault with the classic style of this beautiful blue Porsche



Tucked in amongst all these exotic super cars was this awesome Pro-Touring 1967 NOVA.

About the only thing true to the original was the body style. Everything else was engineered and built to perfection.
Everything under the hood was built for power and it backed up the rumble you heard as he pulled up to park it.
As it sat there all tucked in with that low profile you couldn't help but wonder what this car was capable of.
The best part was all the other car owners came over to check out his build and welcomed him to the event.

I can't wait to see what shows up next month

Some sexy beasts

the new ferrari 458 looks amazing too, just revealed today

thanks for sharing.. and really really great photos. looks like you have perfected your technique. how do you expose properly?
i am guess you are shooting with active anti vibrating and a continuous focus mode?

Ha! That's EXACTLY what I thought when looking at the pics. Must be true then ;-)

Nice Panty dropper

Lambo all the way

Greatpica. Thnx, what car(s) do you own yourself?

I also notice a lot of young ppl owning expensive cars in the USA. Here in The Netherlands you rarrely see an exotic car, and let alone owned by a young driver

My lens doesn't have Image Stabilization and I don't use the predictive focus mode.

Getting a good exposure is the hardest part under these circumstances.

When shooting a model on a set once the lights are set the proper exposure can be taken and then doesn't need to be changed until the lights are.

I'm shooting outdoors with intermittent sunshine and shooting in different directions at almost 360 degrees with cars coming from all angles at any time. I can be shooting a car that is front lit by the sun and have to turn around and catch a car that is now backlit. There is rarely any time to fine tune the proper exposure and if you try you'll probably miss something. I had less than ten seconds to turn and shoot that red Carrera GT shot

What I do is set my Canon 20D to aperture priority at 2.8 for the shots of the car stopped to bring out the depth of field and let the shutter speed fall where it will. For the speed shots I set the dial to shutter priority and 1/160 sec and let the aperture fall into place.

So the cars would come out to the stop sign, I'd grab a couple shots of them in AP and then they would pull out and I'd switch the dial one click to SP and get a couple shots of them driving by and then swing back to the next car that has already pulled up to the sign and repeat the process. Sometimes with six or seven cars coming one right after the other. Then one will do a U turn and come back from behind me and I'll swing around to catch that one too.

With all that going on it's very hard to get the perfect exposure and I'll be the first to admit that mine are a little off. They usually come out a little over exposed but I don't worry about it because they can be tweaked in PS to make them acceptable.

So that's my method of getting these shots. Might seem a little unusual for some but I think it's the end result that matters and hopefully these will get a passing grade. Either way I had a lot of fun getting in the mix with all those great rides.

If I had the money I'd buy something exotic but I don't so I got the next best thing, this Jeep

There's room to put my bike, surfboard and dog in the back and head off to the beach for a day of fun in the sun.
I asked a bunch of those guys if they wanted to follow me over to the beach the other day
and for some reason nobody wanted to drive their supercars in the sand

so you use single AF, and you'd have to be quick to lock focus and not loose focus by the time the shutter is opened..since the car is moving towards you or away from you..
the canon does a good job metering.. which metering method? spot or center weighed?

in any case you do a really decent job, i imagine you could sell those pics to car magazines or on photo stock sites..