A buddy of mine has a rolling rig boom that he let us borrow for a shoot today.

It's a big long flag pole stabilized with a cable, with 2 manfrotto suction cups, and a manfrotto "Magic Arm" on the end.

We shot using my 24-70mm 2.8L on my friend's body (she had a wireless remote release). 1.6x crop.

24mm (x1.6), 1" exposure, F/22, ISO 100 if y'all care about any of that.











Basically on a 1" exposure you're going 5-10 mph. Pretty awesome to play around with! I think I'll end up building my own soon. Been thinking about it for a while.

 

Pics no work.

 

Do they not work for everyone?

I tried it on my phone and another computer and they work on both of those. I'll try rehosting them.

 

use a CPL filter, shoot smarter, and drive faster.

Shooting at f/22 can cause diffraction that reduces the sharpness; don't take it that far. and the miata shot look very soft for a rig shot.

At a 1" exposure, the trees are barely moving, why? they should streaks.

And that shot screams the need of a CPL. That alone will drop you 1-2 stops of light.

the mini shot was done at ISO 400 and f/3.2. why? shoot at the lowest ISO and f/stop you can to reduce the light and increase the shutter speed. He looks like he's stopped in that pic.

the bmw shot settings were better. but take the shot turning left, it looks odd turning "into" the camera, and i'd like to see more of the wheel not the tire.

then think about more compelling backgrounds...

 

Re-hosted the images, added extra shots of the BMW and a friend's "REAL Mini", and scaled them down a bit so they weren't 4k resolution.

 

We had ND filters, but didn't end up using them this time. I think the answer is actually to drive faster and shoot FASTER. We were doing full second exposures, and the pole was bouncing pretty bad. We did some shots of the BMW at 1/4" and even faster, and they turned out much, much better than the Miata shots at 1".

Here's an example of what happens when we slow down the shutter speed further, and try to drive faster (she was driving like a maniac)


The one I linked above was at 1/4"

 

I agree. Try a faster shutter and faster speed.

1/40-1/125 will be enough to blur the background completely at even mediocre speeds.

CPL would be better than an ND to remove all the windshield glare.

any way you can triangulate the pole better? or get it closer to the car and just use an 18mm lens. or use a FF camera.

 

Also, don't forget to 'shop out the rig's reflection on the cars.

 

Updated this.

Fixed the stupid window reflection, sharpened up the body lines using a shot I had taken when the car was still, did a bit of extra dodging and burning, removed the reflection of the rig from the shot.

I like it 10x more now.

 

Went for a night shoot tonight. Light painting with a great big LED cluster.

 

decent highlights layer, where's the rest?

 

Woops, sorry. Here's the midtones.

 

do the opposite of everything Brain says, post up the results, watch him rage so hard he'll crash the intenet.



Nice pics

 

 

Is the flagpole actually bent, or is it just image distortion in the first photo?

Hanging a $2500 lens on the end of a pole and driving down the road takes *****.

Add a speedlight to get some fill on the side of the car facing the camera?

--Ian

 

Looks sick man. We used to do this back in the day with Z cars. i'll see if i can find the photos to share. Something to try. Dont drive the car try pushing it. set the exposure longer and push it. we would get the car rolling. literally 1mph, and set our exposure to 2-3sec.

 

 

Yeah, next time we do it I'm going to find a smaller hill I think with smoother roads and try a longer exposure with less bounce. We tried with the engine off and just slowly rolling down a very shallow hill and modulating the brake, but it still bounced all over.

OG that's a stellar shot. Love it mucho. There's a parking ramp here with very shallow slopes in it, cool lights, and VERY smooth surface. That's our next location I think.

And yeah, the pole is bent. The cable helps to strengthen it. But either way it should be fine. It takes big ol' *****, that camera setup was about $3k hanging from that pole. Which is why we use high quality manfrotto suction cups instead of HF "shower safety" handles or w/e.

 

The trick is to do it on a flat road so you can push it slowly. the faster you go the more the camera is going to bounce. in most of my rollers we just pushed the car from out of frame at a crawl.

 

Right on, I'll give that a shot next time. The person who let us borrow the rig suggested the hill/brake method.

The only thing I'm worried about, is that the rig was SO bouncy. any slight movement of the car (even pushing it at a crawl I'm afraid) set the camera to bouncing like a trampoline on the end of the pole. I think adjusting the tension of the cable will help.