Police car lights

[tedcox]

I am definitely a newby with a Canon T1i. My son recently became a police officer and was asking me to take a couple night pictures with him and his buddies in front of their police cars with the Red and Blue strobe lights on. (there is also a couple of smaller white lights in the light bar on their cars). Lookng for a starting point as this has to be a fairly quick setup and shoot. They are always responding to calls on the nigt shift... Also, would rather not have the reflective "POLICE" sign on the side of the car :-) Any help for a beginner would be highly appreciated. Been hard for me to find any web help on this lighting subject...

Ted

[kirbinster]

To get the lights to look right you have to shoot at a very slow shutter speed, otherwise you freeze them and only get part of them. Similar to taking a picture of a TV set faster than 1/30th of a second, if you do that you see the refresh lines.

[jdepould]

Do you have a flash?

I'd say long shutter, low ISO (TRIPOD!), and pop the flash manually on the guys. If no flash, try to position them so their faces catch the light.