September 2010 - Picture of the Month

Whooo hooo!!

I took the pic with a Nikon D50 - it's a pretty basic digital SLR camera but can take pretty good pics. I was browsing through the local newspaper and came across a "pic of the week" where this dude had taken a pic of his Nissan - just awesome background. With a little deduction using google maps I figured out where it was shot - it is Seattle if anyone's wondering - the Space Needle is over on the left.
Camera was set at the lowest ISO speed (200), and shutter speed was set at 30 seconds. There is a noise reduction setting for long exposures so I switched that on. After that, it was a matter of playing around with aperture settings to get the exposure and depth of field acceptable. Camera was on a tripod with the self timer set to 2 seconds. I think I ended up being a bit late in the evening - got stuck in rush traffic, so I was a bit limited in aperture settings - had to mostly use a wide aperture to get a decent exposure. Probably got about 3, maybe 4 acceptable shots out of it all - folk that were just out for a stroll would walk in front of the camera, and cars would drive between the car and the camera as well!

Edit - one other thing I forgot to mention was I have a key fob that activates a remote cutoff switch. In the middle of the exposure, I would power the car up for about 1-2 secs and then power it off - any longer and the headlights would probably be too bright.

Of course got the usual litany of questions as well!