Motion Blur Shot

[peter_sanders2]

<p>I took this motion blur shot on a roll of film I recently had developed. It was a 28mm/2.8 lens set to f/22 for approximately 10 seconds as a car passed at about 25-35 miles per hour. I wanted the car to be visible, so what should I do in the future?</p><div></div>

[accystan]

<p>Did you intend to upload the shot?<br>

Dave D</p>

[peter_sanders2]

<p>I did, it just took a while because I forgot to reduce the image before hand, and it involved calculations to make it the maximum allowed size.<br /></p>

[andrewg_ny]

<p>If the car was sitting still, you'd see it. </p>

<p>As it was moving its reflected light was distributed along its path during the few seconds (maybe not even entire 10 seconds?) of this exposure. To capture the car, you'd need a much faster exposure to freeze it. With an exposure that fast you'd probably lose the rest of the scenery and the ground would be dark. </p>

<p>This may not be the best idea to inflict on a random motorist but theoretically if the car was illuminated by remote off-camera flash it could be frozen at that point but you'd still have the red trails from its taillights. Maybe safer would be combining multiple exposures--one with the car in place, another with the light trails.</p>

<p>Hope this helps.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>If you're referring to the car that left that red tail light streak, the only way you're going to get the car itself to be visible is to get enough light on it so that it shows. Otherwise you'd have to use a wide enough aperture or fast enough film to get it to show, but then you'd be overexposing everything else. The non-illuminated body of the car is too dim, as is, to be within the visible tones of the image.</p>

[William Michael]

<blockquote>

<p><em>I wanted the car to be visible, so what should I do in the future?</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p><em> </em><br>

Expanding on what Matt wrote: Shoot in daylight (or more light - e.g. dawn or dusk) <em><strong>when there is more even illumination across most of the scene.</strong></em>e.g. @ 1/15seconds: <a href="../photo/9913591&size=lg">http://www.photo.net/photo/9913591&size=lg</a></p>

<p>Obviously as you increase the Tv (Shutter Speed) the car (or the bikes) will become more of a blur and less defined - I doubt there would be much definition of a car at 10s shutter speed.<br>

If you want such a long Tv you might need an ND filter, in daylight.</p>

<p>If you want to shoot it at night, you could use multiple flash exposures on the car (at close range - us an assistant perhaps - or you could follow the car, with a spot-light.</p>

<p>WW</p>

<p> </p>

[kevin_delson]

<p>or.............</p>

<p>How about some image editing magic?</p>

<p>Shoot anther car in daylight or low light; motionless from the same location. You could photograph any car but that will require your skills in scaling to be better than average.</p>

<p>Position and Clone or mask the auto into the night shot. Ta-Daaaa</p>

[jason_gruen]

<p>try a shutter speed of around 1 sec</p>

[mukul_dube]

<p>Concur with Jason. A 1-sec. exposure at f/8 will give the same density as your f/22 shot, and the depth of field of a 28mm lens is considerable. There should also be less colour shift with a shorter exposure.</p>

[scott_murphy_photography]

<p>The easiest way to have blurred headlights/taillights and a visible car is to set the camera up, open the shutter and have someone out of view trip a flash. This will freeze the car within the frame. It is possible to do it yourself, but is a whole lot easier with someone helping you.</p>