We decided after seeing a few examples of "rig shots" in magazines and online we would give it a go ourselves. Between myself and a two other friends we set about designing something that would give us the effect we were after. The whole concept of the rig shot is to keep the camera and car in perfect harmony as the car moves, the camera is fixed to the car to appear sharp and in focus but the background and wheels appeared blurred, this creates an exciting image that can not be replicated by post processing to the same degree.
After a bit of trial and error we had the first basic design complete, a rudimentary pole that just attached to the tray of the car, nothing fancy but it was solid and it worked, so we went out to the local car park, strapped it on and went about replicating what we had seen in the magazines. The idea is to have the car barely moving (walking pace) but to leave the shutter open long enough to give the concept of movement, so I dialled in 2.5 seconds and let the camera figure out the exposure and ran with it, No sooner than about 2 minutes later and I had snagged this one.
I was suitably happy with it when it appeared on the LCD of the camera and it looked even better on the big LCD monitor at home.
Post processing for this was nearly none at all, Adjustment of contrast and a boost in Saturation with some sharpening was all I needed for this one. Because not all the car is seen in the image this allowed the rig not to be seen in the frame at all and hence did not need to be cloned out.
Still, we were not completely satisfied with the shot, this time we wanted the front of the car in frame and the whole thing this time, this was going to require some lateral thinking. After some research we found there is 2 main ways for the rig to be attactched to the car, one been underneath the car to the chassis somehow, either by magnets or by direct bolting to the rails and the second method been suction caps.
We went with the Chassis mount, this both been cheaper and easier to clone out in post processing, so after a trip to the local hardware store and a few dollars later ($12 Australian) we had all the aluminium lengths, some screws and some tie down straps. We were ready for construction.
After a few beers and some messing about we connected it all up, we used an old tripod head and attached it to the aluminium pole. The pole was hinged in the middle by a large screw and then tension was kept via the tie downs, the tie downs looped through the holes in the chassis and then were tied back, checked and double checked, the result was this monstrosity!
Now for testing, with the sun setting very quickly I strapped the camera to the rig, said a quick prayer for the camera's safe return and fired the car up, set the timer and a shutter speed of 5 seconds, it was now or never. Much to my surprise the camera kept near perfectly still, it was a success straight away much to our surprise. Before it got too dark I came up with this one.
Boring composition, boring angle but the concept works, now to build on it and improve the rig for more length. The beauty of our design is that it will fit any car with a hole in the chassis which makes it extremely versatile. The main problem been installation was rather tedious and time consuming at about 15 minutes to make things were secure.
Post processing of this shot was rather intensive and a lesson learnt, stupid me had one of the Rig's arms covering the headlight, I had to clone and airbrush the parts of the light in as best as I could, it took a couple of hours but it was done, one aluminium bar gone, one headlight cloned and the shadows filled in.
Some more shots from the Rodeo Shoot:
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