Night at the Museum
Amazing architecture, soaring spaces, and cars you have only read about but never seen: a photographer’s dream, the new Porsche museum in Zuffenhausen invites discussion of some of the craft involved in shooting in this and similar settings. I hope you will have a chance to see it soon for yourself; maybe some of these ideas will help you document your visit.
Recently opened, the Porsche museum is Zuffenhausen is home to a collection of several hundred Porsches. An overview shot like this can anchor a series of internal pictures.
LEONARD TURNER
A credible job can be done with just a point and shoot camera, and the PS cameras offer some significant advantages in terms of pocketability, being minimally distracting (allowing you to focus more on the whole museum experience rather than the documentation), and providing the ability to do good small detail shots with their built in flashes close to the axis of the lens. But a working DSLR (interchangeable lens digital) camera can give a considerable advantage in the range of your photographic capabilities. Lenses ranging from ultra-wide to normal will be the most useful, maybe with a fisheye thrown in for really wide or wild effects.
Shooting without a tripod may be necessary for a variety of reasons; a stabilized lens and careful technique can allow a reasonably high f-stop to get needed depth of field.
LEONARD TURNER
Using an extremely wide lens like a fisheye can give a nice overview and permits a slow exposure without visible blurring. This was shot at 1/20th of a second from a moving escalator.
LEONARD TURNER
If there are enough pennies left over in these tight times, opt for one of the new DSLRS with extended ranges sensors, better at picking up detail in shadows than cameras just 2 or 3 years old. Many museum exhibits are spotlighted, and with the car correctly exposed there is a tendency for the background to go dark; conversely, if the meter on your camera tries too hard to lighten the background, your main subject may be blown out, that is, overexposed. Check your camera’s monitor, preferably the histogram, to make sure you’re getting what you want. If the right side of the histogram is all the way over and spiked up, you will miss detail than can not be retrieved.
This brings up the issue of tripods, supremely useful in low-light situations, but bulky to carry and not always welcome in the museum environment (I saw no restrictions in the Porsche museum, but some years ago had a long discussion with a French-only speaking attendant at the Schlumpf before I understood that they were forbidden there). A useful alternative is a small folding pocket tripod. While lacking the usefulness of a regular sized model that can be set anywhere, the small pod can often find a resting place on top of a wall, the floor (for low angle shots), or can be braced against a vertical wall, allowing a slower shutter speed to buy a smaller (numerically higher) aperture for greater depth of field.
Here’s a tripod trick. If you have a strong neutral density filter in your pocket, you can use it, perhaps combined with another similar unit or a polarizer, to limit the light coming to the camera. Set your iso to the lowest level your camera permits, choose an aperture of f11 or f16, and you should be able to go for an exposure of many seconds, perhaps even a few minutes. Why go to all the trouble? Because people move, and the exhibits generally don’t, so the people will blur significantly or actually disappear. If you can’t get a clear shot of an exhibit or want a shot of a larger part of the museum without all the people, this can be remarkably effective. Just look out for the guy who stands in one place lost in thought about how he should have bought this car when it was only $10,000.
A 20-second exposure minimizes but does not eliminate the presence of other people.
LEONARD TURNER
Your flash can be your friend, although it won’t act like it unless you use it with care. Stand at the front of a car and let your camera control your strobe and you may get a car that is bright in front, darker at the rear sitting in a pool of darkness—not very appealing. Remember that light falls off by the inverse square law: that which is 5 feet away gets 4 times more light than that which is 10 feet away. Of course, that’s the distance away from the flash, not from the camera, so consider investing in a wired or wireless system that permits your camera to talk to a flash that has left for a happier place. The strobe can be held or placed in a position that will give you better overall lighting and perhaps prevent “hot spots”—reflections off glass or chrome—as well. An even more elegant solution would be to have a friend hold a second strobe triggered by the first to give more fill light, but that’s beyond the scope of our current discussion. Finally, if in an area with a fairly low and light colored ceiling, bouncing light off the ceiling would work; this won’t help you in the high-ceiling Porsche museum, however.
Flash fall off: Shot with on-camera flash, there is significantly more light on the front than on the rear of this 909; better flash placement could help.
LEONARD TURNER
You will probably also like the effect better if you set your camera to make good use of the ambient light in the museum; most people can carefully hand-hold a camera with adequate sharpness at the reciprocal of the effective focal length of their lens; that is, 50 mm needs 1/50th second or higher for sharpness. (Note the “effective” above; with cameras equipped with a small--APS size--sensor, a 50 mm lens is effectively about 75mm, and the higher number should be used). Cameras or lenses with lens stabilization will let you hand-hold at a lower speed, typically by about 3; maybe at 1/15 instead of 1/60. Try using shutter preference or manual and choosing an iso that will give the depth of field you want; typically, 5.6 or 8, but this depends on focal length also. Now you can shoot with either just the ambient light—often the best solution—or using the flash as a “fill” to lighten up shadows.
Ambient: Here all the light is provided by the museum lighting; no flash is used and the lighting is rather even against a very dark background.
LEONARD TURNER
Get a balance of shots; you are there for the cars, but the building and its layout are pretty special too. Get inside and outside shots of the building, of groups of cars (watch that depth of field!), of individual cars, of details on individual cars, and maybe some of the people around interacting with the exhibits. Shoot from different angles, and use a variety of techniques (you may not want to use flash on the 908 body that is lit from the inside to accentuate its translucency).
Fisheye: Look for the unusual shot. This is the entrance to the museum at night; f 5.6 for .6 second through a bus window.
LEONARD TURNER
One last thing, and this is a pearl. In days not long past, we said Shoot a lot—film is cheap. Now that digital film is perilously close to free, there’s really no reason not to. Every time you shoot a car, shoot the placard that identifies it. Sure, you know it’s a 908 longtail, but there may be some nuance of history on this particular car that you’ve forgotten or will forget, and having the details right alongside the photos of the car in your records can help produce a better slide show, article, or just plain memories.
Document individual exhibits with a shot of the information card; would you remember all this 6 months later?
LEONARD TURNER
I hope that you can get to Porsche’s new museum soon and take photographs that sing, but even if you can’t, try some of these techniques at local museums of any kind, or car shows; maybe even in a dealer’s showroom or parking area. And let me hear from you with any questions, observations, or pet techniques of your own. I’m at leonardt@pca.org. It’s always a pleasure.