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The dash at night


dollywobbler

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There's something rather pleasant about a dashboard illuminated at night. Unless you're a night-shift truck driver, in which case I apologise. Here are two of mine.

 

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Annoyingly, I didn't do a light-free shot of this.

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Twilight.

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All of these pictures could have been improved if I took better photos. What have you got?

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My heaps mostly have the good old fashioned "can't see fuck all" dash lighting. The more sophisticated ones have two settings: shite, and completely shite.

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Did one for you just now, wollydobbles.

 

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The neighbours think I do the drugs.

Also Peter, that Fiesta speedo shot is superb. That should be a AS calender shot. Just FYI mods.

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I'm guessing that there are settings other than 'flash off' to get good shots :oops:

 

A fuckload of shutter time and a low ISO \ high-ish aperture if you want your shit to look dramatic and shit. It's also lens dependent. The dashboard shot of my 460 was on something like a 20 second exposure and a daft aperture of f/10 or something loopy to get everything sharp, and a low ISO so everything wasn't lit up like General Melchett's war painting of No-Man's-Land.

 

I also use my 18-55 kit lens if I'm shooting at night because nothing else in my bag can talk to the camera and auto focus, which is well handy at night and you can't see well enough to tug the lens round.

 

So, in summary:

 

Tripod

Long exposure

No flash

Low ISO

High Aperture

 

To be even more helpful and contradict all of that I shot my C4's dashboard at 1/20 with an ISO of 1600 and an aperture of f/2 or something. Get the EXIF, it doesn't talk shit like I do. I also shot that with my 25 year old Nikkormat 50mm prime lens, cos I can get better depth of field than the 18-55. I could see well enough to get the shot because the rev counter back lighting is quite intense.

 

The Saab has a button to de-illuminate (is there such a word?) the dash. Apparently it's because you can do that on fighter aircraft. I'll remember that next time I'm coming back from Cleethorpes.

 

My C4 has a 'dark' button that does something similar. Everything goes off other than the central display's speedo, and goes blank. Of course, the safest place to put this is on the stereo on an unlit button near to the gearstick. Although that may just be my car.

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