What camera are you going to use for the auto show?

Although it is not necessary to have a top camera for auto show, DC obviously does not have a DSLR suitable for auto show. There are several reasons:

Shutter lag is 1. DC is very long, so it is difficult to release the shutter immediately at the ideal time. Think about it, a beautiful car model poses for you, but you can't press the shutter for a long time, which makes people anxious, isn't it? After the SLR camera is focused correctly, you can release the shutter at any time as long as you keep focusing by half pressing the shutter. The speed of continuous shooting is much higher, and the success rate of capturing instant is much higher than that of DC. Of course, DC is not completely unable to grasp the "decisive moment", but to release the shutter at the most appropriate time, DC should not only practice hard, but also overcome the "lead" that needs manual compensation due to time lag.

2. Many high-end integrated digital cameras (DC) have built-in zoom lenses with large zoom ratio, such as the amazing zoom range of 28-450 mm ... The weight, price and volume of such a lens on DSLR will be quite scary. So many beginners are attracted by this selling point to buy an integrated digital camera. However, because the image sensors of DC are generally small, it is difficult to photograph people with blurred background even if the lens has a long focal length and a large aperture. In the chaotic auto show scene, it is more necessary to highlight the main body through fuzzy background, and DC lens is undoubtedly difficult to meet the requirements.

3.DC generally cannot install external flash. A few high-end DC models have hot boots and can use external flash, but most DC models have no hot boots and can only use built-in flash. Using the built-in flash can only fill the light in a small range, so it is difficult to get a flash photo with uniform exposure of the subject and background.

Even the entry-level digital SLR camera (DSLR) is more suitable for shooting auto shows than the most advanced integrated digital camera (DC). Although a large number of car enthusiasts can often be seen shooting with mobile phones that can take pictures at auto shows, this should not be the style of photographers.

What lens should I bring to the auto show?

Many people have been playing photography for some time. Besides the fuselage, there are a lot of lenses. What lens should I take to the auto show? Take all your shots, whether you are a beginner or a professional photographer. Novices don't have much equipment and don't bring much. Professional photographers have assistants, so they don't have to carry their own camera bags anyway.

Generally, ordinary photographers have more than 3 to 5 shots, so it is necessary to carefully consider which shots should be taken out. If it's 16-35mm f/2.8, 24-70mm f/2.8 and 70-200mm f/2.8, there's nothing to hesitate about. Just take them all. From the analysis of the subject matter that can be photographed at the auto show, the proportion of car models, cars and big scenes is the most needed lens, which is suitable for shooting medium-focus to telephoto portraits, for shooting cars at close range with standard zoom and for shooting wide-angle to ultra-wide-angle big scenes. You can focus on your favorite topic.

General 17-85mm f4-5.6 or 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 and other mid-range standard zoom lenses and the ferrule of 18-55mm f/3.5-4.5 may need to be matched with a flash to achieve better results because the maximum aperture is too small. If you don't focus on taking pictures of cars, it can be used as a supplement to portrait shots.

Except for professional lenses such as 70-200mm f/2.8, any lens suitable for taking portraits will do. Including 70-200mm f/4,85mm f/1.2 or 1.4 or 1.8, 100/ 105mm f/2.8 macro,1. It is not excluded that many cinematographers will like to use wide-angle lenses to show the slender legs of models. However, in the auto show environment, it is difficult to take a clean picture with a wide-angle lens. It is better to take a portrait from a medium focus to a telephoto, which is more conducive to blurring the background and making the picture look simple and clean.

Recently, it is also very popular to switch from manual lens to digital SLR camera, and many photos taken by fixed-focus portrait lens are very tasty. However, in the auto show environment, the light is dim and it is difficult to focus manually. Unless you are sure, the success rate of shooting with autofocus lens is higher.

flashlight

If you have a flash, please bring it when you go to the auto show to shoot, and of course, don't forget to bring enough batteries. Generally speaking, unless you have a large aperture lens above 2.8, there are many opportunities to fill the light with a flash. Although we can make up for the lack of light by improving the sensitivity (ISO) of digital SLR cameras, the biggest problem of auto show is not that the light is too dim, but the artificial light with mixed color temperature formed by the lighting of the exhibition hall itself and the modeling light source of the car booth. The biggest function of using flash is to unify the white balance of the model's face with flash.

If you don't have an external flash, the camera's built-in flash is not useless. You may need to use a translucent white matte organic film to flash gently. Please note that any hood or large lens may block the built-in flash and form a black projection on the screen.

tripod

There will be many movie friends at the auto show, so there is no place to build a tripod for you. If you don't use the high-altitude slow door to shoot the big scene of the auto show, you don't need to bring a tripod. If you have a monopod, you can bring it.

Monopod can still provide more reliable support for camera lens than hand-held in crowded places. If your digital camera has a live view function, you can also hold the camera above your head and take some photos at a special angle.

Photographic bag

Because the photographic equipment has been simplified, it is not necessary to take all the lenses away, and it can be packed in a medium-sized one-shoulder camera bag. The shoulder bag is comfortable to carry, but it is inconvenient to take and put equipment in crowded places. If the camera with one shoulder is fully packed, it will be hard for the shoulder for too long, which is why we need to streamline our equipment. Comfortable medium-sized one-shoulder camera bag, easy to take and put equipment quickly, and easy to change lenses.

Digital companion, memory card, battery

Shooting auto shows is the activity with the highest shutter frequency. Every angle of the car in the changing light and shadow, the appearance of beautiful models, will attract the shutter of movie friends. 1GB memory card may be full in less than half an hour. Therefore, sufficient storage equipment must be prepared for auto show photography. Bring as many large-capacity memory cards as possible to avoid frequent card changes in the middle and delay shooting. Digital partners should also try to choose ones with fast transmission rate and long standby time. The most important thing to pay attention to is that the battery of the camera should not only be fully charged in advance, but also have at least 1 spare parts, otherwise the battery will be dead when shooting is enjoyable and you can only stare blankly.

Tactics-auto show photography skills

The skill of exposure

Spot metering is not recommended for ordinary photographers, because beginners often don't know where the neutral gray metering point is on the screen, so it is better to evaluate metering+exposure compensation.

It should be noted that the car surface often has strong reflection, which sometimes misleads photometry and needs+or-exposure compensation. Shooting a car model is similar to stage photography-spotlight illuminates the model's face, but the background is dark, so it is most reliable to measure the model's face with spot metering or partial metering mode (no flash).

Remind novices, be sure to find out whether the spot metering or partial metering mode of the camera can be linked with focusing, some are set on the optional function of the camera, and some are not. In this case, the metering point of the camera will always be in the middle of the focusing screen, so it is necessary to adopt the shooting mode of "half-pressing the shutter to lock the exposure and then re-composing".

It is relatively simple to use the aperture priority automatic exposure mode. You can always keep the depth of field within your control range, and then use exposure compensation to adjust the brightness of the picture. Skilled photographers will also shoot directly in program or manual exposure mode, and only need to pay attention to the exposure level indication in the viewfinder to achieve similar effects.

Flash technology

The exposure technology mentioned above is based on the assumption that there is no flash. There are several points to pay attention to when using flash. One is the exposure mode. The other is about the setting of flash.

If you shoot with an external flash, it is similar to an ordinary fool camera, that is the programmed exposure mode. The exposure of flash subject in program exposure mode is usually normal, but the background is mostly dark. This is because for the sake of "insurance", the camera will automatically adjust the shutter speed very high when using the flash, and the background will naturally not be fully exposed.

It is best to use automatic exposure or manual exposure with aperture before using flash photography. In the aperture priority automatic exposure mode, the camera will not only consider the subject illuminated by the flash, but also consider the brightness of the background that the flash cannot illuminate. The disadvantage is that the shutter speed may be very low, so you need to pay attention to whether it can be within the safe shutter speed range of your hand (if it is too low, you can improve the shutter speed by improving the ISO of the camera, even if you use a flash).

The flash function that also considers the background brightness when flashing is called slow synchronization function in some cameras. If there is no obvious change in the shutter speed of opening and closing the flash in the aperture pre-exposure mode, this function is started.

Experienced photographers don't use flash to illuminate directly. Direct flash light will be hard and have obvious shadows, so people will use indirect flash to fill the light (commonly known as "jumping light"). That is, a reflector or a soft light cover (translucent white frosted plastic product) is fixed on the lamp holder of an external flash lamp, and the lamp holder of the flash lamp inclines upward and is illuminated by the reflected flash. This flash effect is much more uniform and softer than direct light, and the shadow on the model's face will not look stiff.

The index of the external flash lamp that can "jump light" should not be too low, and the lamp holder should be able to rotate. During actual shooting, you may need to use the Flash Exposure Compensation function to adjust the brightness of the flash.

Note: The lighting range of the flash lamp generally does not exceed 10 meter. 10 meters away from the scene with flash photography is a waste of electricity.

The second half-the original law of auto show photography

RAW format is the basic condition to get the best picture.

Beginners generally don't like shooting and storing in RAW format, because the files are very large and need special software for conversion, which increases the workload in the later digital stage. However, due to the complicated lighting conditions of the auto show, it is difficult to make every exposure accurate, and the problems of flash and color temperature (white balance) are all concentrated together, so it is difficult to achieve the processing effect of RAW files by using JPEG format in the later stage, so the car

In order to get the best picture quality, RAW format is the basic condition of exhibition photography.

There is a lot of exposure compensation space in the later period of RAW file.

Ordinary JPEG files can of course be lightened or darkened. The problem is that when you brighten or darken, the details of bright or dark parts will be lost at the same time. RAW files can be adjusted separately. Even if the original photo is underexposed or overexposed, many details can be found later. In flash photography, it is particularly easy to have a bright protagonist but a dark background, so it is easy to correct it by using RAW format later.

RAW files can specify white balance at will.

The artificial light source with mixed color temperature will make the white balance of digital camera at a loss, because the flash is the standard sunlight color temperature, and the skin color of the model can be restored normally by using flash lighting. It is difficult to set the skin color of the model's face without flashing and only shooting with live light. The color temperature value of photos in RAW format can be specified at will, which is much more convenient than JPEG format with three primary colors.

RAW files can realize the later "bracketing exposure"

The light ratio at the auto show site is very large, some areas are very bright in the spotlight, while the shadow parts are very dark. It is unlikely that you can keep both bright and dark details in one shot. After shooting with the standard luminosity value of RAW format, it is output as bright and dark parts respectively in post-processing, and then the layers are spliced to keep the details of bright and dark parts in a photo, which greatly increases the exposure latitude of digital photos, and only RAW files can realize it quickly.

I really think the RAW format is too big. The new generation of digital SLR cameras also has sRAW format (called cRAW format on Sony digital cameras), which has less pixels than RAW format and all the features of RAW format post-processing.