I've been wanting to get into photographing cars for a few months now. I've uncovered a few photos detailing the construction of one for under fifty dollars.





If anyone is interested, I'll keep you guys updated on my progress of the build with photos and all that fun information. Most rigs, including this one, use magnets to hold the rig to the car. I'm hoping to use tension springs and hooks. But I may actually build it so I can use either or both. The reason why I plan to use hooks and tension springs is because the author of the images above says:

But I'll likely use hooks as my first try then move onto magnets. I may end up changing the design you see attached to the car above. Making a rig is about 16x cheaper than buying one! I've also been trying to find good photos of the underside of various cars so I can get an idea of what I'll be looking at while on my back "hooking" everything up. Terrible excuse for a pun was terrible.

Sadly, automotive rigs are closely guarded secrets by photographers. So finding photos of the build and the rig itself is rare, and extremely sought after. I'll be posting in blogs as well.

I'm hoping to have drawing and/or CAD details in a few weeks, buy the supplies and build it in about a week. So, hopefully three weeks max. I already have a variety of ideas on how to build it. So, I'll get to it. I already have prices of everything I'll need - including the magnets, likely the RB70's - and maybe, I'll hook onto the magnets instead of the undercarriage of the car. A washer and a nut should be enough to keep a temporary hook onto the magnet so my springs can connect to them.

I have some great instructions saved offline already which were occupied by the above photos. I'll be going loosely off those instructions.

Great, this is all I'll be thinking about this weekend!

Tiny text is tiny. So is this for use while the car is moving, or what? I would think you'd want to make sure everything is very well-built and attached to avoid damaging your precious multi-thousand-dollar camera. And in that top picture, is the camera support pole photoshopped out?

Yes! However, the cars hardly ever exceed idle speed or faster. With photography magic, I can place dark filters over my lens to make the camera think it's darker than it is and thus get shutter speeds that are two, three seconds and the result is what looks to be a 70mph photo

Haha, multi-thousand. Sure Yeah. I'm hoping the springs will have enough pull to keep the rig rigid and in place.

Yes. Which is something I still need to practice doing, it should be easy but I don't want to believe it is when I jump into a job with it. The first week after construction will likely be testing on friends car, getting the photohop routine down and tweaking the rig.

You can actually see a reflection of the rig just above the closest fog light.

Good stuff, I hope that the project goes well! And I of course hope that you'll post your progress here.

Though it's not the same, my Mom's Escape has what's left of a cell phone amplifier on the side that fits a camera perfectly, so I could get movement shots from the side if I wanted to without building anything.

Nice! That'll be my next rig. This rig is take photos and videos of the car, rather from the side of it.

This reminds me of a video I saw recently, where someone decided to test the 3rd person view used in racing video games in real life with a rear-mounted camera rig and a live-feed to a television in the cab of a pickup (and blacked out windows).

I saw that! It was put on my Machinima, no? It was still funny.

Getting beat up on the way to the car was a nice touch.

I'm not sure where it was, but I liked it.