How To Take Pictures Of BGS's?

[BigMattFromTexas]

Im not sure if this would belong here or not, but when do you take the picture? Like how far in front of the sign are you before you should take the picture? Or does it really matter taht much?
BigMatt

[rickmastfan67]

Well, it depends on your camera and how good of a Optical zoom it has.  My current camera currently is a 10x Optical zoom.  So, depending on how big the BGS is, I can be farther back to take the picture then somebody with a 4x Optical zoom camera. Plus it gives me a 2nd chance if I need to try to get another shot if the first one was messed up.

Anyways, you just have to experiment with all the different settings on your camera and also practice taking pictures of them at speed while being a front seat passenger in the car/truck.  That's all the advice I can give at this time.

But with time and practice, you can get some great shots of the BGS's like the one below that I took.

(Taken 06/14/09)

[Scott5114]

It's all about timing. You want to use your camera's LCD screen instead of the viewfinder so you can see how the image looks with optical zoom. You also want to get to know your camera as well as if you were going to marry the damn thing—learn how long it takes to focus, how long it takes between pressing the button and the photo being taken, and how long it takes to write the photo to the SD card, and learn how low lighting affects all of these times. Once you get a feel for these things, you merely have to learn how to put them all together in your head and know where the "sweet spot" for taking photos is. It's mostly a subconscious thing, so don't feel like you have to memorize the times and add them against the speed of your car and square pi times the limit of y as x approaches infinity. You just get the hang of it after some practice. 



Always make sure your camera is focusing on the right thing (outside the windshield, not the bug guts on it) before you get right up on the sign. Focusing takes probably a hundred feet or so at freeway speeds, and if your camera focuses on the wrong thing you'll want to have time to try to refocus. The time it takes to save a photo is important to keep in mind too as it means you may not be able to take photos of closely spaced signs...so if your camera is a sluggard at writing to disk keep that in mind and don't take photos if the write time is going to make you miss what you really want a picture of most.



Camera settings are somewhat important. If your camera has a "Shutter speed priority" option, use that. (On my camera, it's labeled "Tv", if that doesn't look familiar, use the "sports" setting or whatever is recommended for high-speed shots). Keep the sun at your back as much as possible. As previously mentioned by other posters, use optical zoom. At least zoom in enough that you don't have the dash and hood in the photo. If you zoom in too much, digital zoom might kick in and it's pretty much just resizing the image, so quality suffers. And be absolutely anal about keeping that windshield clean! Spots always make your image look bad, and if you're particularly unlucky, your camera will keep focusing on them and making your signs blurry.



Driving and photographing is a bit trickier in some ways and easier in others. Of course you will ALWAYS want to keep an eye on traffic, and I find that it's usually simple enough to do so by looking through the screen, but depending on how zoomed you are, you might not be able to do that. And of course if you're in heavy traffic/in the midst of crazy-ass drivers, you don't want to do anything. But being the driver you have the benefit of being able to adjust the driving to make the picture come out better (getting in the far right lane, slowing down a tad if necessary, backing off of large trucks, going back for another take). Though if you are in heavy traffic and you're the passenger, that can actually be a good thing, as it gives you a rare opportunity to do some close inspection of them.



And if there's something you absolutely must have a good shot of, pull over!

[froggie]

Personal preference has something to do with it, too.  In my case, I prefer signage shots that include perspective and not just a close-up of the sign itself.  Similar to the example that Mr. Mast posted.

[Alex]

Camera settings are somewhat important. If your camera has a "Shutter speed priority" option, use that. (On my camera, it's labeled "Tv", if that doesn't look familiar, use the "sports" setting or whatever is recommended for high-speed shots).

Do you use TV mode for all times of the day, or just for cloudy, shady, or low-lighting conditions? I generally use TV mode for that, and Landscape mode for optimum photo conditions. If you use TV all the time, what settings do you prefer. I.E. what for sunny conditions, what for cloudy, etc.

I recently ran TV mode during optimal conditions and the photos came out well. My issue with TV overall is that it tends to make photos a bit grainy depending upon lightning conditions. In low lighting, it cannot be helped, as TV is the only way to obtain the photos without significant motion blur. But in higher lighting with shading, such as when a lot of trees are around, I'd like to use TV more without incurring more grain.

[agentsteel53]

the one advantage of the retroreflective signs is that judicious use of the flash helps bring up the foreground levels when shooting into suboptimal background conditions.



this trick will not work for button copy signs of course!

[froggie]

Are you shooting out of a window, or stopping to take photos when you use flash?  I've found it next to impossible to use flash effectively from inside my car...

[CanesFan27]

If you are like most in the hobby, just take a photo of every sign until you really learn. 

If not having a photo of every sign on I-35 is your goal, the best is to actually get out of the car and take the photo.

I rarely shoot while driving anymore (unless it is something that getting out of the car is unsafe).  I try to frame the shot as much as possible, and that really depends on what the surroundings are. Sometimes, I like to have fun with the angles -

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3118/2519260807_50659d152a.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/15530177@N05/2441532981/

With Texas having many frontage roads you may be able to drive along them and take shots of signs without worrying about traffic.  Similar to this one in North Carolina:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/15530177@N05/2441534753/

or NY - taken from a railtrail:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/15530177@N05/2442321000/

[US71]

For closely spaced signs, I have a "continuous" feature on my camera. It's also good for getting BGS's while I'm driving: I can point, shoot and pick the best photo later

Usually, I jump out of the van for my photos, unless there's too much traffic or no place to pull over.

[Chris]

I never pull over to take a picture of a sign in Europe. It's prohibited to stop on shoulders for such reasons. I don't think taking a shot of a sign counts as an emergency. 

I just shoot while driving, trying to get as much from the road as possible, without compromising the legibility of the sign on the picture.

My goal is to "document" a freeway, so I don't want to miss a sign. I also don't take the effort of photographing short sections, I at least want to cover an entire section between two major cities or borders.

[J N Winkler]

I have a few things to add, but will focus less on photography than on some tricks which have to do with sign placement.

First of all, taking guide signs as the subject of sign photos does not suspend the normal rules of good photography--particularly composition and lighting.  In my experience, signs photograph best when the sun is somewhere over your shoulder, although it is helpful to have the sun coming in at a relatively oblique angle if you want surface relief to be particularly evident (especially on signs with some form of demountable copy, such as button copy).  As Jake notes, fill flash is very helpful in many contexts, but keep in mind (1) that the retroreflective sheeting performance of the sign may have deteriorated to the extent that flash illumination brings out unsightly blotches and (2) if the sign is backlit by the sun and you adjust your position and flash strength to optimize lighting ratios on the sign and the foreground, you can still be left with a very light sign against a very dark background.

I have some shots illustrating the possible problems.

Birdshit/paintball stains don't reflect under flash illumination:

http://winklers-roads.fotopic.net/p16968526.html

Old sign doesn't illuminate evenly:

http://winklers-roads.fotopic.net/p16968514.html

Extreme backlighting = dark background:

http://winklers-roads.fotopic.net/p16968529.html

http://winklers-roads.fotopic.net/p16968527.html

For "sign in scene" shots, I have found the rule of thirds is helpful largely in locating the horizon.  For the typical straight-on signs-on-gantry shot, I'd suggest locating the vanishing point of the pavement at the bottom third and the crosspiece of the gantry at the upper third.  Of course, road geometry will not always allow this and application of the thirds rule becomes a process of figuring out which are the most important elements in the composition.

http://winklers-roads.fotopic.net/p16968530.html

Now, moving on to the sign-specific stuff:

*  Unless your main concern is with lighting and color tone, the best sign shots are usually taken while looking at the sign straight-on.  For full-width overhead sign gantries approached on tangent alignment this usually means taking pictures while driving.  On curves, however, it may be advantageous to shoot from a vantage point not on the highway, and not necessarily even in the right-of-way.

http://winklers-roads.fotopic.net/p6697616.html

Shooting straight-on is not necessarily as simple as just getting in front of the sign.  On rural freeways in the US it is typical to build four lanes divided (in the first instance) on right-of-way 300' to 400' wide, and to locate ground-mounted large guide signs about 30' in from the right-of-way fence.  This is done (1) to put the sign well outside the clear zone (30' or more in width for high-speed roads, counting from the edge of the traveled way), thus removing the need to provide frangible posts or guardrail, and (2) to reduce the chances of the sign being obscured by large trucks.  Signs thus located tend to be positioned with the sign panel normal to a tangent drawn through the roadway alignment at the point where the sign is located.  What this means is that in order to get a straight-on shot, you need to be standing directly in front of the sign, and to do this, you need to park on the shoulder (or in some other safe place) and do a cross-country hike across the ditch.  I have done this many times, and it is worth the effort, but it is enough of a hassle that it makes sense to reserve it for shots which have definite artistic possibilities over and above merely recording the appearance of the sign.  (BTW, this peculiarity of sign location practice in the US is the main reason StreetView has so few pictures of ground-mounted large guide signs with readable legend.)

http://winklers-roads.fotopic.net/p16992547.html

http://winklers-roads.fotopic.net/p16992623.html

In the case of cantilever-mounted large guide signs, the straight-ahead position is usually in either the shoulder or the right-hand driving lane.  The reason for this is that the length of the truss arm is the critical dimension for cantilever structures:  the shorter it is for a given structural cross-section, the less the likelihood of failure.  90' is about the limit for cantilever construction and for a cantilever structure with guardrail protection beginning immediately at the back of the shoulder, the clear width of truss between the post and the right-hand edge of the sign panel is often 15' or more.

In Britain the rules are somewhat different since land is used much more parsimoniously for highway purposes.  On level alignments through prime agricultural land, for instance, it is not at all uncommon for the highway boundary to coincide with the edge of the clear zone.  Ground-mounted signs are invariably located in the clear zone, with either guardrail protection or frangible posts.  Naturally this increases headlight glare on the sign panel and this is dealt with by rotating the sign panel an additional 5° off the perpendicular to the road alignment.  What this means is that if you want a straight-on sign photo, you will in effect position yourself toward the outer edge of the clear zone and will be shooting across the carriageways at an oblique angle, so that the road seems to disappear into the right-hand edge of the sign panel.  It has historically been very common to illuminate large ground-mounted direction signs using Fresnel lamps positioned in front of the sign and it is not always easy to find a vantage point from which the lamp housing is not silhouetted against the sign.

http://winklers-roads.fotopic.net/p16864954.html

Final observation regarding flash illumination:  it is extremely difficult to find combinations of distance and camera flash settings which won't cause signs with microprismatic sheeting to flare out.  I don't know precisely how this relates to sheeting properties, and strictly speaking the problem exists in some form even for the traditional enclosed-lens (engineer grade) and encapsulated-lens (high-intensity) sheetings, but it is much worse for microprismatics.

[agentsteel53]

JN Winkler nailed the most important aspect of sign photography in the Banff shot:

it always helps to have spectacular mountains in the background



or, interesting clouds, or trees, or something.



and half the time, just throw the rules out the window.  this shot has the signs completely illegible and was taken in an urban Hellhole but it's still one of my favorite sign photographs.



the front page of the shield gallery (www.aaroads.com/shields/) has some of our best sign photos.  It's heavily biased towards old signs, but in general it is a good reference.  Keep refreshing the page to get a random image.

[Truvelo]

Getting silhouettes is the last thing I want but I must admit the last picture does look nice with black shields

One thing I do when taking pictures on the move is to get several pictures of the same sign in case any are blurred. My camera can take 6 frames per second so sometimes I just leave my finger on the button and I can get several almost identical pictures but with varying amounts of sharpness or blur.

One of my last US pictures I took was this a couple of weeks ago. The sun was behind the signs but the software with my camera has a feature that changes colors to improve contrast. In fact this feature can alter the shade of green from the modern brighter green to the darker 30 year old shade.

[mightyace]

If I'm taking pictures while moving, I make sure the image stabilization mode on my camera is on.  It cuts down drastically on motion blur.

If you have a more advanced advanced camera where you can set the shutter speed manually, set it to a fast shutter speed like 1/500 sec, 1/1000 or 1/2000.  (1/250 sec might work, but slower than that is pushing it)

[Chris]

I usually leave it on auto. 95% of the pics are not blurred then. But it depends on the direction you're driving, and how clean the windshield is. Nothing as irritating as dozens of dead bugs on the windshield. I carry some cleaning stuff with me all the time.

[mightyace]

I usually leave it on auto. 95% of the pics are not blurred then. But it depends on the direction you're driving, and how clean the windshield is. Nothing as irritating as dozens of dead bugs on the windshield. I carry some cleaning stuff with me all the time.

Well, the Image Stabilization mode on my digital is an automatic mode, it must prioritize more towards high shutter speeds.

Personally, I like to set at least one of shutter speed and F-stop myself, or at the very least, I want to know what the camera is doing.

[myosh_tino]

While reading the Mr Roadshow column written by Gary Richards of the San Jose Mercury News, I ran across this...

Q I know texting is illegal while driving. How about photography while driving?

Scott Burke

A It's also illegal to take a photo from your cell phone while driving. And I wouldn't suggest using a camera, either – police could ticket you for a distracted driving offense.

Which brings up the question for those of you who have taken pictures of California's highways, do you drive and take pictures at the same time, do you have a friend drive while you take the pictures?  I've tried to take pictures of signs while driving and I have to admit, there's been more than one occasion that I've gotten that uncomfortable, distracted feeling.

[Michael]

^^^I've had that feeling too.

I'm on my third camera (the first two broke ) and they've all had a manual mode.  They were about $100, and I was surprised they had that feature at that price!  If set properly, you can get good photos from a cheap camera.

My cameras

• Current: Polaroid i1037
• Previous: Samsung S860
• First: Samsung S760

[agentsteel53]

I take pictures all the time while driving, but I will admit pictures taken while riding shotgun have come out a lot better.  if there's an old shield I absolutely need a good photo of, I pull over to the side.

[CanesFan27]

Alex...

Have you tried working with adjusting your ISO in various conditions? 

[Terry Shea]

(Taken 06/14/09)

It figures that the Strip District would be right next to Melon Arena! 

[Alex]

Alex...

Have you tried working with adjusting your ISO in various conditions? 

You know, I've only used it on auto mode, but since this thread came about, I thought of experimenting with it on my camera to see what results I may get.

From what I remember in the old film days, I'd use ISO 100 for bright sunny days and ISO 400 for days with cloudiness. I even had a roll or two of ISO 800 back then. Here's a photo from one of those rolls.

What are your recommendations for digital photography?

[Alps]

I usually only play with exposure settings in two conditions: dawn/dusk (twilight) and indoors.  Indoors, I use it to get longer exposure than 1/8 second to get brighter photos.  During dawn/dusk, I may cut the exposure down to 2000 (1/2 ms) if I want to capture the oranges, yellows, etc. as vividly as possible.  Then, gradually, I start increasing the exposure as light decreases - I have used as long as an 8 second exposure in near total darkness to capture a sign photo where flash obliterated the various cracks on the sign.  I find it to be one of the more useful settings on the camera.  I haven't experimented with aperture settings yet - I probably could use that to let in more light without the longer exposure or vice versa.  Worth a try some sunny day.

[CanesFan27]

100 is your best for sunny days unless you have high action  (i.e. football, soccer, rugby).  You don't really need to go with 800 on overcast days - 400 usually suffices - unless it's closer to dusk.

http://www.slrphotographyguide.com/camera/settings/iso.shtml

I usually use ISO speeds more often for action photography.  I do a lot of hockey photography (Steve Alpert can attest to this) - and my old camera tapped out at an ISO 400.  With the new Canon XSI - I'm looking forward to using ISO's up to 1600 (which is recommended for hockey) - so I'm excited about trying that out tomorrow night for the first time.

Also, if things are too grainy there are programs like Noise Ninja etc.  (I'm slowly learning these).

And finally check your manual - on a lot of cameras you can't adjust ISO in landscape - the purpose of that is basically it sets the camera for max depth of field and also tries to saturate certain colors (blue's and greens).

[J N Winkler]

In regards to camera settings, for bright sunlight I use the following:  full-manual mode, ISO 100, 1/500 sec, f/8.  This will also work for through-the-windshield shots while the car is moving provided some allowance is made for attenuation of light through the windshield (this will likely have to be established through trial and error, though a gray card can be used to obtain precise results).

When unblocked sunshine is not available, I use a program mode which varies aperture and shutter speed.  I don't think I have ever bumped up ISO for exterior shots, though I have for indoors shots (I need ISO 400 to give myself a margin of safety for document photography).  For shots taken from a moving vantage point (e.g. while driving) there is a four-way tradeoff among lens zoom (zoom too far with too low a shutter speed and you get motion blur), ISO (too high an ISO and you can eliminate the motion blur but you get golfball grain), and the usual variables of aperture and shutter speed.  Under conditions of low light and bumpy pavement this tradeoff is very tightly drawn.

Cameras vary very widely in how they handle low-light situations (which typically imply high ISO).  I use a Canon PowerShot, which is not engineered to provide fine grain at high ISO or a great amount of tonal definition in areas of shadow (maybe because it has a CMOS sensor?).  I knew it had those disadvantages and I was ready to accept them, because I knew my principal use of the camera would be in high-contrast situations (document photography).  I did also look at a Nikon which had a somewhat lower MP count but better grain at high ISO, and Fuji has some digital P&S cameras which offer very good grain at high ISO.  I would imagine that a digital SLR would offer better performance in terms of grain at high ISO, but I have never been sure whether the performance is so much better that it justifies the premium of buying a system camera with the intention to use it only with a bog-standard zoom lens.  (I reached maturity as a photographer with 1960's film SLRs--Pentax Spotmatic and the like--and I have absolutely no interest in jumping into the world of digital SLRs at the moment, because the structure of the lens market seems completely wrong to me.  A digital SLR with a zoom lens is essentially just a jumped-up P&S.  In contradistinction, a 1960's 35-mm film camera with a 50-mm f/1.4 lens and macro ring offers a much broader range of artistic possibilities.  But zooms have become the standard now, and the modern equivalent of a 50-mm prime lens with an aperture opening that wide is mind-blowingly expensive.)