Car Show Photography?

[freeferrarisdonotexist]

This being almost a new year, most of us will be excited about upcoming motor shows- though Europe has already done it's major shows, the US still has many shows left. My question is, since I am going on holiday to the US during the car show season, how do you properly adjust the lighting/flash settings on a digital camera to make decent pictures at an indoor auto show? Last time I tried, in a car museum, the photos were either dark, blurry or much too bright. I have a standard 10mp digital camera, sadly not a DSLR. Is there anything I can do to make a balance between the too dark (no-flash) and too light (flash)?

 

[Matt2000]

Flash diffusion all the way. I rented a flash gun and bought a professional diffuser for my camera when I went to MPH (you can see a few of the photos in my gallery) but I found out at the weekend that a piece of opaque tape directly in front of the flash (hard to explain so I won't) gave a similar effect, decreasing the amount of light directly hitting the subject and giving the picture a warmer colour.

It did start to smell of burning after about 5 shots though...

Just experiment with bits of tape stuck to the top of the camera so they droop in front of the flash.

 

[nist7]

In door car shows are very well-lit so I don't think you have to worry about anything, unless this car show is a dinky little event under a tent. A simple point and shoot will work perfect with it in auto-mode.

For low light situations like in that a museum, it's a bit trickier since you need to let more light to be exposed onto the "film" and so when the shutter stays open longer people's hands are shaky and you get blurry pictures...so then they use flash which makes a tremendous amount of light and makes the pic look bad or if there's too little light the pic is bad.

 

[freeferrarisdonotexist]

For low light situations like in that a museum, it's a bit trickier since you need to let more light to be exposed onto the "film" and so when the shutter stays open longer people's hands are shaky and you get blurry pictures...so then they use flash which makes a tremendous amount of light and makes the pic look bad or if there's too little light the pic is bad.

EXACTLY. By the way, the car show I visited last year, in Houston TX, US, was at times very bright- about 2 yards from the cars- and extremely dim- anywhere far away. Add cars jam-packed at odd angles and mirrored signs reflecting light towards or away from the cars and it is even worse then the museum. (If this helps, it was in a large, warehouse-like stadium)