Creative Splurges

2024-10-31 16:52:17

Ectomobile

Ghostbusters is one of my all-time favourite films. It has been for as long as I can remember – probably because it came out a few months before I was born, so I can’t remember a time before Ghostbusters, or the first time I saw it.

Kit List
Canon EOS R6 Mk II
Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8 L IS USM

The Ectomobile from the film is also one of my all-time favourite movie cars, competing only with the Ford Explorer from Jurassic Park for my affections. I have photographed Ecto-1 before, but it was a bit smaller and made out of Lego. So when the Bluebell Railway announced that a replica would be visiting one weekend, I jumped at the shot to go see it and take photos. Luckily it turned out to be a lovely day.
1/500sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 24mm
As you’d expect, I spent some time photographing it from a variety of angles.

1/640sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 24mm

Including one of the iconic angles.
1/800sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 64mm
I only faced a couple of problems. The first was the light. We were there in the mid afternoon on a mid-October day. Normally this brings the best sort of light, one I love to shoot in, but it was not in the best place on this day – it was behind Ecto-1, and the car itself was parked where it was half in sun and half in shade. Occasionally I was shooting straight into the sun.
1/1000sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 24mm
The driver’s side window was rolled down so I could get a shot inside.
1/100sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 24mm
I continued to take pictures from a variety of angles.
1/640sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60mm
I moved round the back, and in this shot you can see the problem with the light – not helped at all by the fact I was photographing a white car.
1/640sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 24mm
The other big problem I faced was other people. Echo-1 understandably draws a small crowd, so there was often people around in the background of the shot. I did make a few attempts to use Lightroom’s Generative AI to remove them, but they were often poking out from behind the car in front of a busy background, so it struggled to achieve a decent result. In the end most of the time I left them in place, even if they made the shot a bit busy, because I simply didn’t really have any other choice.
1/400sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 24mm1/200sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 27mm
As you can see they had a full set of proton packs too.

1/125sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 41mm

But as you can see, I was still struggling with crowds and light.
1/1600sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 42mm
So it was time to head into the station and look at trains. After spending a bit of time at the railway I popped back out for another look at Ecto-1. By this point things were a bit quieter, and the sun had moved such that the whole car was now in shadow, making whole-car shots a little bit easier. So of course I started with an even more extreme closeup than before.
1/60sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 50mm
By this point there were less people hanging around cluttering up the shot – and at least a few of the people were in Ghostbusters garb.
1/200sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 24mm
I tried to fit in a full-length shot on the quieter side of the car but I couldn’t quite fit. In hindsight, and if I had the patience (or perhaps more accurately, if my wife and toddler had the patience) I’d have switched to a wider angle lens.
1/200sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 24mm
By this point the rear hatch was shut, allowing for some cleaner shots of its back.
1/200sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 31mm1/125sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 56mm
1/100sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 70mm

With the car in shadow, the chrome was reflecting nicely.
1/160sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 24mm
As things quietened down I was able to get a decent clean shot of the whole car from the ideal angle.
1/250sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 24mm1/160sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 48mm
As you might have noticed in one of the pictures further up above, there was a Spider-Man Ghostbuster present as well, for reasons I can only assume are related to cosplayers gravitating towards each other (there was also a Deadpool Ghostbuster too, although I didn’t get his photo). Spidey Ghostbuster offered to pose for a photo and I couldn’t say no to that, so I snapped a few shots of him.

1/160sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 70mm
1/200sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 56mm
I also grabbed a shot with a more traditional Ghostbuster in the background.
1/640sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 25mm
I quite liked this angle for photographing the front of the car too.

1/500sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 70mm

I also snuck off a shot of the Ghostbuster – although looking at this photo he might have spotted me.

1/160sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 70mm

With a family eager to get home, I squeezed off a last shot before calling it a day.
1/250sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 33mm
As I often do when I take a whole bunch of pictures of the same thing, I’ve only included a selection in the post above. Below is the full set of images.

#Aperture #camera #cars #Ecto1 #Ectomobile #Ghostbusters #movieCars #movies #nature #Photography #travel

My Kit

It’s pretty obligatory these days for a photography website to reveal what equipment is being used. Maybe it’s bragging, maybe it’s just a courtesy so someone in the market for some new…

^{Rob (Creative Splurges)}