Panning vs. The ‘Rig’ Shot
Rig Test #1, originally uploaded by .Jazz.
The in ‘thing’ at the moment in automotive photography is, “the ‘rig shot”. For those that don’t know what a ‘rig shot is, it’s very simple. It is basically just a camera mounted to a car and using a long exposure technique you’re able to create some pretty cool motion blur while keeping the car itself crystal clear.
There’s a few guys out there doing it really well, but someone I keep an eye on, and inspires me regularly, is Chris Brasher. He’s doing some really good stuff at the moment. Check him out at his blog.
Example of a panning shot
So what is the point of all this stuff? Simply, it is to give the feeling of ’speed’ to a photo by creating motion blur around a fixed subject. There are a few different ways to do this.
One is called ‘panning’, which is where you set a reasonably slow shutter speed (i shoot around 1/40th) and attempt to track a fast moving object. I’ve been doing this one for a while now and pretty much have it down pat. This technique is great when you need to be a fair distance from the subject. This might be so that the subject has more context, or just because you have no other choice. I used that technique here, here and here.
The other way is by attaching the camera to the car itself and to attach the camera, you need a rig of some sort. For the above shot I used a rig with 2 vacuum mounts and a long boom so that a wide-angle lens could fit in the whole car. With that I could drag the shutter and move the car a lot slower. For example, a 1 second exposure with the car moving at walking pace and you can see that it has comparable motion blur to one of the above panning shots where the car was moving at about 80-100km/h with a shutter speed of about 1/40th.
Original rig shot before the rig has been removed in photoshop.
In a nutshell, using a rig gives you a lot more control over the image itself in regards to the angle, amount of blur and even removes a lot of the ‘hit and miss’ you get with panning when it comes to keeping the car clear, in focus and reducing camera shake.
So, before I laid out the quite copious amounts of cash to buy all the gear, I decided to borrow what I needed off my friend, Teon, who already has all the gear. You can check out Teon on Flickr or at his blog where he’s got a nice little write up on how he edits his rig shots. I managed to get some practice in and found using the rig to be, well, kinda fun. It also allowed me to practice on my own without the need for an assistant to drive the car. Using a wireless remote shutter release made it possible to trip the camera from the drivers seat.
The rig brought with it some of it’s own issues though. It’s quite difficult to make the boom 100% rigid so camera shake was still a small issue. Also, shooting in the middle of the day is difficult as even at f/22 with ISO set to 100 (Nikons can’t go down to ISO50 
) i was still slightly over-exposing at 1 second exposure, and that was WITH a 3-stop ND8 filter! I think to pull this off better, location will have to be taken into account. I’m thinking undercover parking areas would be quite suitable.
At the moment, I still prefer the panning shots over using the rig, but that’s probably only because I need a lot more practice. Hopefully Teon won’t mind if I hang on to his gear a little while longer so I can do some more practising. I’m still fine tuning my process for mounting and shooting with the rig as well as my post-process technique. It’s all a little different to Teon’s so I may post up more details on that in a later post.
Stay tuned for more…
on January 15, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Permalink
Looking good. I’m interested to read about your PP technique, so shoot me an email when you post it.
I’m fairly sure that the vibrations in the rig are caused by flex in the rubber mounting point at the back of the suction cups. I’m thinking about adding a 3rd cup to the rig, off at an angle, to make a triangular mounting area, which should help in that regard…