TIP: Ask owners to remove any placards that are placed under their windshield (windscreen if British) wipers.

One of these days to be car show season again, although the monthly Vehicle Vault Cars & Coffee events continue through these Winter months. While Cliff and I have put our video series on hold, I am going to try to attend to shoot either one of my new film cameras or one of my new wide-angle lenses.

If you get to any show early and you should placards may not have already been placed under the windshield (windscreen if you’re British) wiper and the added benefit to being an early bird is that it’s also less crowded so people won’t walk into your shots. Most owners can talk for hours about their cars because there never was a restoration project that didn’t have some interesting twists and turns. While chatting ask them to also temporarily remove any show placards placed on the dash or under the windshield wiper. Don’t do it yourself!  Always ask the owner before touching any part of his or her car! It’s best to have them to remove any show placards, so ask politely

This Nissan-powered hot rod (above) was photographed at the SEMA auto show in Las Vegas—with the hood up! (Sometimes you can’t always get what you want.) Exposure with a Canon EOS 5D was 1/40 sec at f/4.0 and ISO 800.

You don’t have to be an expert on a particular marque or even cars in general, but you should be curious and polite when inspecting a car that might make an ideal photographic subject. If you see the owner, ask them a question. People who own interesting cars often have interesting stories to tell about their cars before it reaches the state where you would want to photograph it. If the owner is not around and the light is perfect, just shoot it as it is and try to select and angle that minimizes the placard or makes it easy to remove using Photoshop later in the digital darkroom.

This Allard above was captured using a Canon EOS D30 that had been converted to infrared-only capture by LifePixel. Exposure through an eBay purchased Russian-made 16mm f/2.8 lens was 1/160 AT F/16 and ISO 200 in Av mode.

I’ve found that Life Pixel does a great job with IR conversions and they have done most of my Canon DSLRs and all of my Panasonic Lumix G-series mirrorless cameras. This is not a paid or sponsored endorsement, just my experience.

My book, The Complete Guide to Digital Infrared Photography is  available from Amazon for $41.99 but used copies starting around nineteen bucks as I write this. Creative Digital Monochrome Effects has a chapter on IR photography and is available from Amazon for $25.40 with used copies start around two bucks, less than your next cup of joe at Starbucks.

You can read my in-depth review of the Olympus E-1MX on the Shutterbug website that features some of images of cars and motorcycles that I shot while I was in Florida (disclosure) courtesy of Olympus. I wrote about my first impressions of Oly’s ED 17mm f/1.2 PRO lens on my how-to photography blog. But now it can be told: Because of an NDA, I wasn’t able to say that the image of the O’Brien Park gazebo that appears on that post was made with the E-1MX WITH an exposure of 4 sec at f/8 and ISO 200—handheld. Yes, handheld at four seconds.

So I took an E-M1X with ED 17mm f/1.2 PRO lens to Cars and Coffee and…where are all the cars? This post could have been subtitled “Suppose they had a Cars & Coffee and Nobody Came,” but what the show lacked in quantity it made up by the enthusiasm from mostly young people who brought mostly Japanese cars. Interestingly most of the cars continue a trend that you see everyday on the road: Many of the cars where black, while or some shade of grey.

One of the upsides of shooting at sparsely attended shows is that hardly anybody walks in front of you when you’re shooting a car. So there’s always a silver lining. And since I love Mitsubishi Evo’s and Nissan Skylines, including a mostly stock 25-year old model that was painted my favorite shade of grey, I shot the images you see below.

How I Made these Photos: I shot this Mitsubishi Evo (is it pink?) with the E-M1X’s flippy screen flipped out so I could get this low angle. Lens was Oly’s ED 17mm f/1.2 PRO which will let you focus as close as 7.87-inches. Photograph was captured with a Program mode exposure of 1/800 sec at f/4 and ISP 320.

I photographed this Nissan Skyline that one of three Skylines at the show with the E-M1X’s flippy screen flipped out too. Lens was the ED 17mm f/1.2 PRO with a Program mode exposure of 1/1000 sec at f/5 and ISP 320. Boy, Oly’s Program is really weighted toward high shutter speeds, which is funny considering how amazingly capable their IBIS is.

The next Cars & Coffee at the Vehicle Vault will be held on November 13, 2021. Hope to see you there.

•    Starts: 9:00 am
•    Ends: – 12:00 pm
•    Location: Vehicle Vault 18301 Lincoln Meadows Parkway Parker, Colorado 8013

See you then and hopefully Cloff Lawson and I will be there shooting episode 4 of Joe & Cliff go to Cars & Coffee.

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy ($2.50) Joe a cup of tea, click here. And if you do, thank you very much.

One of the joys of attending the Tokyo Motor Show*, at least for we Americans, is that we get to see cars from around the world that are not typically imported into the USA. In addition to French cars, which have not been sold in the USA since the 1991 Peugeot 405— Columbo drove a Peugeot 403—you also get to see Asian cars that never make it here, such as the class of Japanese automobile know as Keijidōsha or kei cars. The below image was made at a previous Tokyo Motor Show and the little car sure is cute. Sadly, I don’t remember the manufacturer’s name; I originally thought it was Daewoo but now I’m not so sure.

How I Made This Photo: Camera was a Canon EOS Digital Rebel with am 18-55mm kit lens (at18mm) with an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/6.3 and ISO 400.

A kei car or kei jidōsha (“light automobile”) is a category of small Japanese vehicles, including passenger cars, vans and even pickup trucks designed to comply with government tax and insurance regulations. For private use, the cars feature yellow license plates with black numbers and have yellow numbers on black background for commercial use. Although regulations restrict physical size and engine displacement (currently 660cc), manufacturers sometimes include technology and features associated with larger vehicles. That’s why Kei cars are often available with forced-induction engines, automatic and CV transmissions, front, rear and four-wheel drive, air conditioning, GPS, and other features.

While successful in Japan, manufacturers consider the genre too specialized and small to be profitable in export markets, which is why we rarely see them here. I guess one look at the sales figures for Smart cars are a good example. But that may be changing…

One kei car that has a large cult following here, UK and Australia is Nissan’s Figaro. It was only manufactured for one year—1991. The Figaro uses a 1.0-liter (987 cc) turbocharged engine producing 76 hp and is kind of a sunroof/convertible sorta like the Fiat 500 convertible. In fact the Figaro is three inches longer that the 500, so take that Fiat. Because of the USA’s 25-year import rule, Figaros have been entering the country from various JDM importers and I’ve seen one driving around here on local roads. And just between you and me—I think Mary would hate it— I would love to own a Figaro as the next JoeCar.

*Amid the global pandemic, Tokyo Motor Show 2021, which was to have been held in October this year, has been cancelled because of the difficulty of providing, in a safe and secure environment, a show program that allows participants to experience “hands on” the appeal of mobility.

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat Joe to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.75, Starbucks raised the price of Earl Grey), click here. And if you do, many thanks.

Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s out-of-print but new copies are available for $21.49 or used copies starting around nine bucks from Amazon, as I write this. Kindle version, for some reason, is really expensive.

One of the classic rules about photography is that light has four major qualities: color, quality, quantity, and direction. As photographers who are seeking to master the art of exposure, seeing that light is the key to mastering the art of exposure, especially when it comes to photographing cars.

Learning to see light is not difficult but takes some practice by not just constantly making new images—it doesn’t have to be of cars—but also taking the time to analyze those photographs after you’ve created them. For example, the exposure for the black Jaguar (above) was 1/320 sec at f/8 and ISO 400, which is one and one-third stops less that the camera indicated as “correct.”

I’ve always believed that camera’s designers realized that no amount of automation will produce a perfect exposure under all possible lighting situations and what some people might consider the correct exposure. others might not. You are the final arbiter of what’s really correct. To help you home in on an ideal exposure, your camera’s Exposure Compensation feature lets you increase or decrease the automatic exposure by your choice of one-half or one-third tops to get the exposure you like. (I prefer one-third stops but this is not a “my way or the highway” blog.) Using the camera’s LCD screen and histogram can help you fine tune what what you really this is best.

One of the first tips that I give aspiring car photographers is that they should underexpose black cars to render them as black and overexpose white ones, so they look white. When you think about this concept, it makes perfect sense: By forcing the exposure to middle gray tones, you’ll end up with a white car that looks gray or a black car that looks gray too. For example, the exposure for the white Nissan Skyline (above) was 1/500 sec at f/10 and ISO 200, which is two-thirds stops more that the camera indicated as “correct.”.

For more on this subject, check out my post Understanding Digital Exposure Techniques when you have time.

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat Joe to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.75, Starbucks has raised the price of Earl Grey), click here. And if you do, many thanks.

Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s out-of-print but new copies are available for $21.49 from Amazon or used copies at prices that are all over the place. Kindle version, for some reason, is really expensive.

The title of today’s post originally appeared in the text that for a wallpaper image that was available for download from the first generation of this website and blog. And while I am not alone in my disdain for these vehicles, it wasn’t always that way.

Back in 1984, Chrysler (or whateverthehell they called themselves at the time) my wife and I saw a pre-production Dodge Caravan doing high altitude testing while driving on I-70 near Vail, Colorado and we liked what we saw. At the time, we were driving a Subaru 4×4 station wagon and the thought of having all that space for hauling our studio’s photo gear was appealing, much more so than a standard full-size van. But all that changed after the Caravan was launched and subsequent generations of minivans quickly became the default mommy-mobile.

It seemed like as soon a baby arrived in a family, the couple raced down to a car dealership and bought a minivan because that’s what they thought they were supposed to do having been indoctrinated by the happy, smiling families and their dogs in TV commercials for minivans. Flashback to the 1960’s when my daughter was born and I owned a first-generation 1964 Plymouth Barracuda. With its fold down seat and folding trunk partition the available storage space was copious and the car had a sense of style (at least to me) and I never, ever thought, “Oh I need a truck to drive our young daughter around.”

The obvious alternative to a minivan is a station wagon. Nowadays station wagons, along with hatchbacks, seem to be anathema to most Americans, yet Europeans buy them in equal numbers to sedans. Other than Subaru, no Japanese maker, that I know of, still offers wagons, while most European car companies still do. Instead of my (now sold) Mercedes CLA sedan, I really wanted to buy the company’s CLS wagon. But I couldn’t because Mercedes did not sell the wagon version (pictured aove) in the USA. Instead Americans were only offered the smaller—yes, there’s less room—GLA crossover that is, nevertheless immensely popular. Hey it’s a nice little truck but if you need more room, why do I need to buy a bigger SUV?

For all the minivan haters out there. there is good news on the horizon: According to The Truth About Cars, the American minivan category accounted for 408,982 sales in calendar year 2019 but Americans won’t acquire 300,000 minivans this year. With the effect of the pandemic influencing some car sales, “the minivan segment saw its share of the U.S. market crater”—to 1.5 percent. I expect this trend to continue into 2021 as more and more Americana get into crossovers, like the 2018 Subaru Crosstrek that Mary just bought*, which while it’s not a station wagon is, in a way, a much better option for many families than a minivan.

*Please note that this is Mary’s, so now she has three cars: a 2016 Beetle convertible, the 2018 Subie and, yes, her company car, a 2016 Ford Escape. Me? As of this writing, I still do not own a car but Mary lets me drive the Beetle and Subie from time to time. Look for a video with my driving impressions of the Crosstrek real soon now.

The weather for the past several Cars and Coffee events in Parker Colorado has been a combination of really cold—single digits F at the last scheduled event—and snow. The truth is I didn’t even head down to the events; I just looked out my living room window and said, “hell, no.” I am optimistic about March’s event. It can’t possible have bad weather again, could it…

Part of my affection for Cars & Coffee events has nothing to do with coffee. Those who know me well (and now you) also know that I don’t like coffee and never drink the stuff. I drink tea. Maybe it’s part of me being an Anglophile, which doesn’t explain the German car in my garage—it’s really Mary’s, I still don’t have a car after two years—or maybe it does.

The main reason I love Cars & Coffee is that you not only get to see the most interesting cars but get to meet the most interesting people too. Like, Ziggy the owner of the above 1954 Holden 4-door (at left) that he brought to the event. Note the New South Wales Holden Car Club badge in the grille. It was Ziggy’s car back in Australia and when he moved to Florida ten years ago he brought it with him. How hard was it to import? He told me that nobody said anything and nobody hassled him in Florida, he told me. And when it came to registering the car in Colorado, it was no problem here either.

Maybe things are loosening up when it comes to registering cars that are a bit out of the mainstream. One of the two Nissan Skylines (below) at the show is owned by an Aurora, Colorado policeman. And yes, I do have a thing for Skylines that appears lost on my wife who doesn’t get the whole JDM thing. But that’s a topic for another post.

Trivia: Holden was a GM subsidiary in Australia and built many interesting cars and trucks there, including the El Camino-like vehicles they call “utes” down under. In Australia, the Chevy Colorado isn’t a pickup truck but was an off-road-capable SUV called the Holden Colorado. Australia’s near 100-year automotive industry ended in 2017 when GM Holden Ltd. closed its plant in South Australia “to move manufacturing to cheaper locations.” Which meant the end of the Australian-built Chevrolet SS as well..

I love Cars & Coffee because you always learn something at these show. At this particular event, I talked with the owner of a Pontiac Solstice coupe. Yes, a coupe. When’s the last time you saw one of those? I never had seen one before, except in photographs. The coupe version of the Solstice was unveiled at the 2008 New York Auto Show and while the roof can be removed it doesn’t fit in the trunk. In a wonderful stroke of GM design, there’s not enough room for it—anywhere. An optional cloth top is available that can fit into the tiny trunk. The car went on sale in early 2009 and was the last new Pontiac model before the brand went down the tubes, sadly creating yet another orphan marque. There were a total of 1,266 Solstice Coupes manufactured before the production line in Wilmington, Delaware was shut down.

But that’s not all I learned. His son has a Land Rover 90, “a Defender,” I asked. “Nope,” he replies “until the Discovery was introduced in 1989, they were all just called Land Rovers.” And were only named Defender in 1990. All of these are just a few of the reasons, why I love Cars & Coffee.

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, thank so very much.

I originally photographed this classic Nissan Skyline GTR for the late and much lamented Modified magazine at Red Rocks Park located outside of Denver.

Super Street magazine once had this to say about the magazine: “Modified was the ultimate auto magazine, where all the cars have a focus on function over fads. The brand covers tech and how-to performance tuning articles; project cars, engine builds, and suspension, tire, wheel, and other upgrades; extensive event coverage and 100’s of photos; and product buyers guides.” It was shuttered several years ago due to the vagaries of the contemporary magazine business.

The Nissan Skyline GTR is/was/always be the ultimate cult car and when any of them show up at Cars & Coffee events or car shows, they’re invariably crowded by young people who grew up playing video games soaking up this amazing automobile that was never officially brought into the US. Now that the 25-year rule can be applied to these right-hand drive JDM cars, many are coming to America. The current model Nissan GT-R may be the spiritual successor to the Skyline and while it is an amazing cars in it’s own right, to me, it lacks the same vibe.

How I made this shot: The above image was shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II N with the (now discontinued) EF 100-300mm f/4.5-5.6 USM lens (at 108mm) with an exposure of 1/500 sec at f/10 and ISO 200.

Photographically the most interesting part of this story—to me and maybe to you because it addresses the old JPEG vs. RAW controversy—is what Modified’s Art Director said when giving me the assignment. He told me, “Just shoot JPEG’s for most of the shots but for any you think would make a good double-page spread, shoot it in RAW.” I did what he asked but the photo he used for the magazine (the above image) and spread across across two pages was shot as a JPEG. Go figure.

Along with photographer Barry Staver, I’m co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s available from Amazon for $21.88 prices with used copies selling at the giveaway price of two bucks, as I write this, less than you next Venti coffee at Starbucks.

Continuing Monday’s theme of obtaining proper exposure, presented for your approval…

I strongly believe that in photography there are no one perfect or correct way to accomplish anything, although some platform/trade show presenters may disagree with me arguing that only their way is the one, true perfect road.

There is no “my way or the highway” in photography. In my world and on this blog you get to choose the methodology that works for you. Even a road less traveled is OK, if it produces the results that you want. If it doesn’t, it’s time to look at some alternatives and with a little bit of testing, fine-tune your methods to your preferred subject matter and personalized way of working.

Part of what makes the Tokyo Motor Show lots of fun to attend is the interesting and unusual concept cars that automobile companies, such as Nissan, put on display. While it’s unlikely that the company would even build such a beautifully retro roadster as this one, I like to think of it as the spiritual successor to the Datsun 2000.

How I Made this shot: Sometime when I have to work quickly shooting in locations that have complex and mixed lighting, like the Makuhari Messe Convention Center, I’ll use Program mode (not Green mode) as in the above photograph of a Nissan concept car at the Tokyo Motor Show. The image was shot with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel and an EF 18-55mm kit lens with an exposure of  1/60 sec at f/5 and ISO 400 with the tiny pop-up flash adding a bit of fill.

Back to basics: If you get a handheld meter or in-camera setting of 1/500 sec at f/11 and want to use a slower shutter speed to allow for subject or camera motion and choose 1/125 sec, you’ll have to adjust the aperture so the same amount of light falls on the sensor. By selecting aperture (Av) or shutter priority (Tv) mode, your camera will do this calculation for you, eliminating any guesswork. And then there’s the substitution method.

Using a Gray Card: When using the substitution method, you visually replace an object within the scene with an object of known reflectance, such as a Kodak Gray Card or Gray Card Plus and take a reflected-light reading off of that object. You can also substitute objects that match the light reflectance of an object in the scene. Don’t have a gray card? Back in the film days I used to take a reading off grass, if there was any in the scene, and then open up one stop.

When pointed at subjects with reflectivity near 18%, reflected light meters are calibrated to provide an accurate exposure. Yet, the exact value varies and details are complex with some handheld meters measuring 12% with others at 14%. By placing a Gray Card in the scene to be photographed and taking a reading off of it with any reflected light meter, you should expect consistent exposures but sure be sure to read the fine print instead of just accepting the reading as gospel. The instructions packed with the Kodak grey card, for example,  contain the following advice about adjusting meter readings:

• Normal subjects: “Increase the indicated exposure by ½ stop.”
• Light subjects: “for very light subjects decrease exposure by 1/ stop”
• Dark subjects: “If the subjects is dark or very dark increase the indicated exposure by one to one and one-half stops.”

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat Joe to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($3.50), click here.

Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s now out-of-print but new copies are available from Amazon for $21.88 with used copies selling for four bucks. For some reason, the Kindle price is really high.

It was 35 degrees F with a strong wind producing a wind chill of 27 degrees, when I arrived at the now-named Exhaust & Espresso car show at the Vehicle Vault in Parker, Colorado. The highlight of the day for me was meeting fellow photographer Ken Nelson aka @phreddawg (on Instagram) at the show.

I normally don’t have any photographic goals when attending any car show but at the April event, I had three items I wanted to test and here’s how it went.

Test shooting my Olympus Pen F. As I mentioned in a post on my New Blog, I’ve always wanted a Pen F and for it’s first real test, I took it to Exhaust & Espresso. The weather may have been inhospitable but I must confess that unlike Ken, I was not properly dressed—not enough layers—so I didn’t shoot as many images as I may have liked. The photographs I did make did not dissuade me from my initial impression. I love this camera and look forward to shooting the First Saturday’s cars and coffee events in Colorado Springs, which kick off on May 5, 2018. The image of the Mercedes Benz is SOOC and shot with the Olympus 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II R lens at 17mm with an exposure of 1/1600 at f/8 and ISO 250.

Test shooting my color IR-converted (by LifePixel) If you saw my post on converting a newly acquired Panasonic Lumix GX1 to infrared capture using LifePixel’s Hyper Color filter, I’m still experimenting with it, although the weather in Colorado this spring has been challenging. I’m looking forward to shooting it this summer but in the meantime I wanted to see what the camera/filter can do with non-traditional subjects like cars. The image here was from a RAW file tweaked in Color Efex Pro. Lens was an Olympus 17mm f/2.8 with an exposure of 1/1600 at f/4 and ISO 160 using one of the cameras custom settings that I want/need to tweak further.

Shooting Two Cameras. In the past whenever I shot using two cameras at the same event it always ended up in a disaster with the cameras banging against each other and in one case I ended up destroying a lens. (Yeah, I know I’m an idiot.) My plan was that using the GX1 with the sling-style BlackRapid Street Breathe strap and the Pen F with the better-than-nothing Olympus neck strap would make working with two cameras easier. Did it? Yes, up to a point. Did the cameras bang together? Yes, one time but I’m blaming the wind and will try again with next month’s show. There didn’t seem to be any real damage but there were some new, tiny scratches on the Lumix DMW-LVF2 viewfinder. And yes, that bothered me.

The next Exhaust & Espresso at the Vehicle Vault is on May 12, 2018. Hope to see you there.

•    Starts: 9:00 am
•    Ends: – 12:00 pm
•    Location: Vehicle Vault 18301 Lincoln Meadows Parkway Parker, Colorado 8013

Depth of Speed: Wagon Heritage from Josh Clason on Vimeo.