this past weekend i went to a indoor car show and came out with some nice pictures but more of a whole bunch of blurry and underexposed pics... i was a bit unprepared for the event as it was a spur of the moment thing and i only had my camera with the 10-20mm Wigma on it... no tripod or flash...

it was at an indoor convention center and there was some overhead flourescent lighting... i was shooting mostly at 20mm in AV mode and i found myself stepping down alot of my shots just to get the shot bright enough but then with handholding, i guess that is where the blurry shots seemed to come in... after getting home and reviewing the photos i realized i should have probably just kicked up the iso a notch and then i wouldn't have had to step down the shots so much?

on some shots i also seemed to run into issues where there were crazy reflections from the highly glossy and polished cars so the shot looks like it is blurry, but it is all the reflections from all the surroundings?

tip for future car shows besides remember your tripod and flash next time!!!

TIA

 

The only options you have is to use a flash, go HH and shoot @ a higher ISO, or bring a tripod. Several years ago when I covered SEMA I brought a light- weight tripod and carried it around with the camera and lens already mounted. Everyone told me it wouldn't work, but I did it anyways. With the sheer amount of people attending, I thought a UWA would work the best because I could shoot cars as close as possible. The only problem is the lens isn't that fast.

This year @ SEMA, I may do the same thing or shoot @ a higher ISO since the 7d has better noise control then my old 40d. For the amount of cars/area to cover, I'd rather not use the flash and conserve battery. I easily went though 16 gigs in 2 days.

As for reflections go, you can use a CP filter to control this.. but keep in mind you lose a few stops.

 

i thought about all the other people that would be there and around the cars so i also thought WA should be fine since i could get close in and still shoot the whole car... but the people caught in some of the shots came out blurry since the WA lens was slow...

if i went with just bringing a tripod next time, would it be better for me to just use a faster prime at like 50mm and just let all those stray people be in the shot?

EDIT: what lightweight tripod are you using? i am going to Russia in June and plan to take some nice landscape shots so i think a tripod would be key. i will need something compact cause i don't want to have to lug all the weight around the Red Sq...

 

It's a cheaper manfrotto, forgot the model name. But there are plenty of LW options if you want to spend $$$$$ (carbon fiber for example). 50mm would be useless IMO on a crop. It's just not wide enough and people are going to block your pictures. We want to see the cars @ car shows, not people in the picture. With a WA, you can go fairly close and get the whole car.