How to Catch Good Photos on the Road?

1/640, ISO800, 0.3EV (18mm, f/4)

1/320, ISO800 (34mm, f/11)

This post is about taking photos of cars through the bus / car window.

1. Rule number one is essential when taking any through window photos: no flash!

1/800, ISO800 (24-34mm, f/7.1-8)

Above: frozen movement – no movement shown in cars or background

2. If you want to stop the cars use your camera on shutter priority mode (mode in which you can choose shutter speed and ISO), choose really short shutter speed like 1/800 or 1/1600 (depends on speed of both cars and weather, the quicker the speed is the shorter shutter speed and the darker out is the shorter time works best)

3. When stopping cars use higher ISO to make shorter shutter speed. Very important in low light conditions.

1/200, ISO800 (34mm, f/16)

Above: Showing the movement. You can see how the background is moving because it looks nice and soft. You might also see the movement of the wheels.

4. If you want to show the movement use longer shutter speed (like 1/200 on highway, again depends on the weather and speed) If you want the background to move try to follow movement of your subject with your camera. To make car blurry follow the movement of background.

5. Focus to the road before your you’re  subject drives by to make sure you have perfect focus

6. In case you can choose, take photos of the brighter side of the car (if the purpose of your trip is photographing cars think about timing, weather and which route you should choose). That shows the shape and color better in most cases.

Ps. In this post you can get some idea what kind of cars and roads is in Midwestern US. These pictures are taken somewhere between South Carolina and Ohio (maybe in West Virginia but I haven’t got my GPS on in my camera so I’m not completely sure) at March 2015. Yes, it took me a while finnish this post haha. I just try to primarily posting hot topic things that cannot wait first and when I have extra time I do other posts. 😀