How to take pictures while driving, with your Nikon

Since I posted my pictures from the cross country drive from California to New York New England, many of you have asked me how to take such pictures, what did I use and similar questions. Before I begin to explain, I must say that such photography is risky. You would be traveling at high speeds and all your attention should be on the road. So I would not recommend it to you, unless you are in the passenger seat or in the navigator’s seat.

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Taking pictures while driving at high speeds is very similar to taking the picture of a deer running very fast from where you are standing. I have used three techniques for all those pictures.

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1) For pictures where I did not have something in front of me to lock-focus, I set the focus manually at infinity, and set the shutter speed at over 100 for most of them.

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2) For pictures where I had an object in front of me, like a vehicle or a sign post or a high land, I locked-focus and took the picture.

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3) For pictures of landscapes, I again set the focus at infinity and shot through the wind shield.

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All the pictures are taken through the windshield, with the camera held up high enough to avoid the bonnet. Note that none of those pictures have been cropped (they have been re-sized for sharing over the internet). So did I miss any shot? Yes, certainly. There is a certain amount of unpredictability with taking these sort of pictures. But since I have been doing it for long, I could get 8 or more good pictures from 10 gates.

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The camera was Nikon D200 and I had used a wide angle lenses from 17 mm all though 120 mm. The higher the focal length, the better the composition and lesser chance of getting your car’s bonnet in the frame. But that also increases the chances of camera shake. You got to do the balance somewhere in between.

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Since they were all taken from behind the windscreen, I did not use any flashlight. The ISO was held between 100 & 200 so as to get sufficient resolution in case I needed to crop.