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I had a shocker of a time trying to find the best setting to use at car shows where you're basically shooting at big curved mirrors in hot colours with viscious lighting setups. Anyone have tried and tested methods that yield better results?

....... have you tried shooting in RAW, AUTO colour balance and use Adobe camera RAW to correct the white balance using the eye dropper tool.......or the sliders...

...or polarising filter to tame some reflection?

Ahh this is something I do a lot of. Some suggestions:

1) Use a monopod or tripod
2) Get yourself a f2.8 lens
3) Definitley shoot in raw, I found that the lighting in the locations they have car shows is somewhat weird, being fluourescent

Also, think about using a flash and getting a diffuser for it. I'll post some pics I've taken when i get home to show you some examples

Cheers

Chris

cordy wrote:2) Get yourself a f2.8 lens

... or faster. Think about a 50mm f1.4 or f1.8. Flash is problematic with such reflective surfaces.
I would also recommend presetting WB with an ExpoDisc or grey card, and certainly shooting RAW.

I actually had a 20mm f1.8 for a while, now that was fantastic.. unfortunately I had to give it back to my mate, didnt matter how much I tried to persuade him to let me keep it

Having 20mm was nice, was able to get nice and close to the cars and not have people walking in front of me

Chris

Since shooting that I've gotten hold of a 50mm f1.8 but I dont have a polarizing filter for any of my lenses at all. Now a 20mm F1.8 - that would make me very VERY happy.
This was shot with a tripod and I only ever shoot RAW these days.

That wall in the background was a weird off grey colour to start with so I wasnt aiming to get that white. I colour correct in the adobe RAW plugin for CS2 anyway.

thanks for the comments and suggestions.