I had simply wondered if a monopod might have been a more practical
solution than the tripod, that's all.

As Jerry only requires a lower-resolution output, I would also have
thought that the Canon, with its lower noise sensors and built-in,
in-camera noise reduction, would have provided good results at ISO 1600.
The DP Review samples look excellent.

 http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos350d/page26.asp

Perhaps Jerry will have a chance to test that at some point?

David

Polarisers don't work on metal like chrome so they may not work for you.

Thanks, Jerry.

David

John Turco offered these thoughts for the group's consideration
of the matter at hand:

As to trying to PHOTOGRAPH cars, give it a whirl some time. I'd
be curious to hear your experiences to see if they at all match
mine wrt frustration at not being able to get consistently good
results.

Personally, John, I like to hook up a really big generator and up
the power of the laser beams that come out of my camera and burn
holes in the cars with a laser beam. Much quieter than gunfire!
<grin>

dennis@home offered these thoughts for the group's consideration
of the matter at hand:

Dennis, are you commenting on trouble with AF or trouble with AE
or both? I have tried full manual focus and exposure in tests at
home and a few times in test mode in this particular museum.
Naturally, I separate the two in my controlled testing so as not
to confuse the effects of one trial with the other and vice
versa.

One direct question for you, and please do not view this as an
insult: do you regularly or even occasionally shoot cars in
museums or are you commenting on the general case where you say
that manual invariably works well?

I find it virtually impossible to reliably manual focus my Rebel.
Part of it is a very dim - to me - view finder, which has no
focus aid (although I know they can be purchased and custom
installed). The other is that AFAIK, a Rebel won't give me an AE
lock confirmation unless I also give it what it thinks is an
"correct" focus. In other words, if I manual focus and try
pressing the AE lock button, I don't see a confirmation. And,
since I can't really tell visually if I do or don't have it
focused correctly manually, that doubles the problem I deal with
every time I go to a museum.

I have also tried full manual exposure in flash mode by putting
my 430EX in manual mode and the camera in either Tv or Av or M
mode to do the exposure. Here is where I simply CANNOT get
reliable flash exposures without an accurate way of measuring the
distance to the subject. In controlled tests, where I could
either use a simple Stanley tape measure or pace off the
distance, what would seem to be a trivial task of getting an
accurate exposure turns out to be so difficult in practice that I
gave up early last year.

I commented earlier that I know of a few other people who
commonly try to shoot cars in museums - NOT at auto shows which
are very brightly lit. All these people report the same basic
difficulties I see, albeit in variations. The dim light makes
available light exposures impossible without a tripod or putting
up with the noise of ISO 1600. Focus is its own problem, as is
flash.

As luck would have it, a friend in Ohio that I talked about
earlier called yesterday morning. He shot a series of pictures at
the Studebaker Museum. He is about as skilled - or unskilled if
you prefer <grin> - as I am with his D80 and SB800. From car to
car to car, I could see that he had EXACTLY the same sort of
problems I experience. Not so much AF failures, although he
probably chose not to post his small percentage misses. But, some
cars were properly lit, reasonably evenly lit, reasonable
lighting for the background, no significant glare, etc. In short,
as decent a flash pictures as one could expect. Then, in the same
series, he posted what looked like underexposed images with bad
WB, a sure sign that the flash had incorrectly determined the
main subject lighting and he got an underexposure from not enough
ISO.

He agrees with my basic theory as to why this is: when I press
the AE lock button, the flash - either the built-in little one or
my 430EX - sends out a very brief light pulse, which the camera
obviously uses to measure the reflected light coming back to set
the exposure "accurately. Fine so far. But, much of the time,
maybe half, I can see a large flash glare someplace else on the
car than I was using for my AE sample point. Assuming that the
camera saw this glare, it would very likely assume more light was
actually on the subject than there really was and produce an
underexposure.

Yes, I have also tried altering the "EV" on both the camera where
it is really Av+/- and the flash, up to +/- 3 stops but it seems
to have little effect. The very best I've been able to come up
with as a solution is to choose a darker area on the car and one
that will minimize inadvertant glare "fooling" the AE
computation.

One other comment I'd like to make: when taking flash in my house
or my garage of my cars, there are both close walls and a ceiling
to bounce and "control" the flash pulse. In general, both are
absent in museums. Being that a ceiling is very, very rare, that
also eliminates the other standard solution - bounce flash.

Again, when talking to my friend, while his experiences do not
exactly parallel mine, they are close enough so that we are both
convinced that neither the cameras are in some way defective or
that either of us is incredibly stupid. We theorize, maybe
incorrectly but probably not, is that if the camera were broke or
we were just too stupid to live, we'd get close to 100% failures.

To complete the thought, my BEST images are when there is a large
amount of ambient light covering the car in a very even fashion
and nothing around to deflect the flash pulse. My WORST failures
are dark colored cars in a very dim ambient light environment,
and with the available light coming from overhead spot lights or,
worse, a combination of spot lights and a nearby window.

Now, so that I have at least SOME credibility left after this
"confession", when taking pictures of smaller exhibits at the WPC
museum or the Henry Ford Museum, especially of non-car subjects,
AF and AE failure rates go WAY down. e.g., when shooting an
engine on a stand, an instrument panel on a stand, a cut-away
transmission, or similar small exhibit, pretty much I have little
trouble. If there's a reason, it is that these three examples
have little or no high reflectivity to fool the AE computation.

I am really NOT asking for help here, so please keep the
Photography 101 lessons to a dull roar and also please keep your
insults in check. On the NG I most commonly post to,
alt.binaries.pictures.autos, there are a few people that
literally have sworn at museums and sworn off shooting pictures
in other than tripod mode. I interpet from this two things: 1)
they get a LOT of one sort or another failure and don't like it
and 2) they've not found a reliable technique to overcome it.

Again, please don't go into tutorial mode or "you're too dumb to
use a DSLR", but if I've overlooked anything obvious, I AM
interested. Last comment about my friends, they, too do not have
the time to set up a triod and do it the correct way, which would
work every time especially if we had custom WB profiles set up
for the half-dozen most common lighting conditions.

Thanks for listening.