Shooting Challenge: 29 Excellent Engine Shots… Vote For Your Favourite

Hope you guys can think fast, because this week’s Shooting Challenge entries are coming at you. There are some amazing photos in this bunch, so start voting for your favourite photographer! They might just win an Ultrabook!

For five weeks, Gizmodo readers (and the friends they convince to vote for them) are voting one weekly Shooting Challenge finalist through to the prize round to be judged and announced by Gizmodo editors on Wednesday, June 27.

Note: In the interests of fairness, voting has been restricted to one per user; based on cookie and IP.
Voting closes at 10am on Tuesday, June 5.


Prizes

Ultrabooks are a new category of mobile PC that pack speedy Intel Core processors and a lightweight design — ideal for photographers looking for an editing studio, storage drive and entertainment hub on the go.

We’re excited to be giving away one Dell XPS 13 (valued at $1199) to participating Gizmodo readers. The Core i5 13.3-incher has edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass and is just 6mm at its thinnest point.

Finalists: Giz also has remote-controlled indoor airships (measuring 1.27m long) for each of the four other finalists who don’t win the major prize. The Turbo Blimp is valued at $200. Full comp details and T&Cs here.


Last Week’s Most Voted Photo – Finalist 1 Of 5

After almost a thousand votes, we have a winner: congrats to Larry Chew!

We’ve included Larry’s new ‘Engine’ photo below, but disabled voting for him because his ‘Speed’ photo is now in the final round! But it’ll face tough competition from this week’s entries…
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This Week’s Entries

Click on images to zoom into gallery mode, and don’t forget to scroll down to vote.

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Shane Everist

Canon 50D 60mm macro. Nothing special about the inspiration, I guess that just about every kid thinks that fire engines are cool.

Elissa-Simone Hui

Title: Search Engine
So it seems my dad is not the only one interested in vintage cars…
Camera: Canon 5D II
50 mm – ISO 1600 – F2.8 – 1/80 sec

Larry Chew

Title: The mad scientist prepares for the last remaining moments before transplanting the human engine with his engineered one.
Camera: Canon 5DMarkIII
Lens: 16-35mm
ISO: 640
F-stop: 6.3
Exposure: 1/125 sec

Rachel Smith

Taken on a Canon EOS 500D with 50mm Lens
Took Several Engine pix, but for some reason kept coming back to my Fan belt.
Subaru Outback fan belt.

David Erskine

Went down to a local hot rod swap meet and found this sweet ride. Was hoping for someone to be revving there motors or doing a burnout but it is not covered by there insurance policy 🙁

David Johnson

I was trying to work out how to best take a different shot of an engine, then after teeing it up with a mate who’s building a boat, he let me take a shot of his boat motor.
Not just any boat engine but a jet boat engine ! (Yes it is a real working jet engine)
Engine ready, boat build under way, time to beat”dad’s” record LOL
Like the first jet boat in the family this one’s planned to be “VERY FAST”, soon as the computer is fixed LOL
Camera :Canon 600D
Tv: 1/60
Av 4
ISO:400
Lens Sigma 10-20 @18mm

Jay Daley

My first time ever photographing anything like a Lamborghini. The room was brightly lit so I decided to drop out the ambient light to darkness and then use off camera flash to light the engine a bit differently.
Some basic curves and dodging to the RAW and that was it.
1/125th, ISO 320, f16. Nikon D800, Nikon 24-70 f2.8 lens and 2 x SB900 flashes.

M Joe Lim

photography equipment, settings,
– Nikon D5000, Nikkor AFS DX10-24mm
– Aperture Priority, f5.6, ISO800

technique
-Handheld,

story behind the shot.
-Took me a long time to figure out how to tackle this week’s theme. So i thought why not try HDR photography.
-I used my car it’s a 2008 Toyota Camry Altis with 2.4 littler engine.
-I use a little plain four and water around the engine otherwise it will look too clean heheheh.
-Post process is done in photoshop to adjust the colour and contract. I add in some filter just to give it a more surreal and hopefully and dramatic feeling.
-Here’s my attempt for this week’s theme. Please enjoy

Rachel Gray

Having always had an interest in horses I figured that this perfectly fits the theme. Horses are the literal engines for horse drawn carriages and they are also part of the ‘engine’ that drives me personally.

Matt Holliday

I was sitting there on the couch thinking of what i could shoot for this weeks engine challenge. I looked around and found this model of a motorbike and thought i would mess around taking a few shots. This was the end result.
Canon 60D
Lens 55-250mm @ 100mm
ISO 100
30 sec exposure @ f/16

Walter Gawronski

This shot of a working model engine was taken with my Canon 450D fitted with a Pentax K mount 50mm f1.4 lens which I was testing on my camera via an adaptor.
The shot was taken at f1.4, focus was on the fan blades to test D.O.F. and sharpness at maximum aperture.
The lens was given to me in return for cataloging and selling my Son in Laws old 35mm Pentax gear on ebay.
It works great 🙂

Todd Fletcher

We were in a snow storm at the time so i couldn’t pull out the SLR so i used a Panasonic Lumix FT2 – I know its cheating but still I wasn’t going to risk the SLR after falling into a crevasse with it and spending 20 minutes cleaning snow and ice off it.
Well this is a pic of the air taxis in Alaska, USA on the Kahiltna Glacier where i was last week preparing for a summit attempt on Denali (tallest mountain in north america) , we had to dig the air taxi out of the snow after we received 20cm in a storm overnight and that morning. About 30 mountaineers in base camp at the time then had to stomp out the runway for the more air taxis to fly in, that poilet arrived the day before then the weather changed, we were delayed on the glacier for 8 hours before we could fly off due to the snow on the icy runway. Only 6 days now until im back on the glacier for the attempt at the summit of Denali so im currently sitting in my hotel cleaning gear … joy

Roland Pedeferri

I had a slight dilemma: I don’t have a car and cannot find any decent angles with other people’s cars. I then resorted to taking photos of trains, but that wasn’t any good.

So I walked to the airport and got a photo of this plane instead. The Fokker 27 Mark 50 has two powerful Pratt and Whitney turboprop engines providing 2100 Shaft Horsepower. That certainly qualifies as an engine.
Enjoy!

Camera:
Fijifilm Finepix S1500
Aperture f/5
Shutter 1/150
ISO 400
Program: Shutter Priority

Stefan Stojanovic

Taken by a Pentax RZ18 at custom settings, this V6 beast of a motor powered the notorious Japanese Nissan 350Z sports car to compete in a D1GP exhibition event held in the Las Vegas Motor Speedway; unsurprisingly it gained a perfect score.

Joel Kong

Canon 600D
Lens: EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II
Shutter: 1/12 sec
F-Stop: f/5.0
ISO: 3200
Focal Length: 39 mm

Retired and marked to be disposed. From its former life as a whipper snipper engine, to being re-birthed as an educational tool, I scouted this powerhouse in a storage shed. This will be its last moment of glory, an engine ‘super-model’, bathed in light, reflecting what it once was.

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Sequoia Weitman

The Camera I used was a Nikon D90 with a 18-105 3.5-5.6 zoom lens ISO200 at 18mm 1/20 F3.5 To achieve this photo I simply pointed the camera at my Dad’s tractor, it is a forty year old Fergi which my Dad uses for slashing and feeding out hay to the animals. It is practically an antique, but it is the best tractor my Dad can afford.

Marcel Hohmann

As soon as I saw the topic of this conversation I decided to take photos of one of the little engines for the RC plane I’m building. I used my Nikon D90 and my Sigma 70-300mm 1:4.5-5.6 DG MACRO ( I know its a bad lens but I bought it second hand when I first got my camera and can’t get rid of it) Anyways the wooden base is actually a cutting board and the black background is a folder. For lighting I took my mothers desk lamp and as a tripod I piled up some books until the angle was right and left the camera on a 10 second delay so the shaking created by pushing the button didn’t affect the shot ( No Image stabilisation on the lens). The shot was taken at F10, ISO 1600 and 1/20th of a second shutter. Some editing in Lightroom.

Rob Lacina

Title: NGK

My lawnmower’s spark plug. Shot at ISO 1600 to get a gritty grain effect. Because the spark plug is white against a black background, shot at -2/3 EV to stop it from overexposing.

Post-processing: Cropped, Levels Adjustment & Converted to B/W, Added frame

Camera – Canon EOS 550D
Lens – 50mm
Camera Mode – Aperture Priority
Exposure Time – 1/1600 seconds
Aperture Value – f1.8
ISO – 1600
White Balance – Shade

Darren Varney

The is one of the four giant steam engines that was used to power the Spotswood sewage pumping station until replaced by electric pumps in the ’30s. The photo was taken on a Olympus E-M5 using the Stock 12-50 lens. ISO-640, F-stop f/5.5

Frankie

this is the old sowing machine that was powed by hand

Norman Vuong

This photo was taken in Rhodes Shopping Centre car park from my brother’s Honda Civic Type R EP3. I love the sound the high revving VTEC and the feel of the K20A engine.
Nikon D5100 – Nikkor 50mm lens
ISO 100 | f/11 | 6 sec

Alex Gillis

This my little engine that could. I love the design, and all it represents. The G5 was Apple growing up – a move from the awful plastics of the rest of the G-series. It was the first 64 bit PC, vastly different to everything else on the market. Coming up to its tenth year, the case remains virtually unchanged. A classic in every respect – that remains useable to this day. This hand-down served me well, handling RAW images and HD video that far later machines struggled with.
K200D, 18mm, F3.5, ISO400.

Andrew Simmonds

This is the bypass of a Rolls Royce jet engine on the 787.

Mark Atkinson

Camera : Lumix G3
Lens :14-42
ISO : 200

Well who can forget one of the simplest engines… the steam boat, this little jet boat was discovered at a market on our travels to NZ last year, and what a beauty!

When I saw the comp my first thought was of this little guy, so I dragged it down from the cupboard and what is better than a bird bath 🙂

Good luck to all and
Enjoy

Mark

Nick Albon

You are looking at a Honda engine in its natural habitat I shot with my Panasonic Lumix FZ150 with leica lens. I have taken this photo with a 0.25 second shutter speed and an ISO of 800 to account for the low light as they are nocturnal creatures. The Honda engines main diet consists of complex hydrocarbons and have no natural predators.

Gil Wright

I had a great idea… Engine = old brown and gold Indian Pacific Diesels parked at ATP (Eveleigh). Lens = newly re-released surrealism set from Hipstamatic.
Problem = no sign of the engines. Took about 50 shots around the old railway workshops but wasn’t real happy about any of them. Was fiddling with rotating the phone to change the effect and ended up with this shot of one of the old cranes used in the workshops with all the gearing exposed.
No post-photo editing, taken with hipstamatic, salvadore 84 lens, dream canvas film.
Guess the trip to ATP was wasted after all 🙂

Stuart Addelsee

Canon EOS 7D – Sigma 10-20mm

10 sec | f/10 | ISO 100 | 10mm

I never knew my Mazda 121 could go so fast without a bonnet! A long exposure shot with my camera/tripod mounted on the front of the car.

Stuart – http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuart_addelsee/

Jason Wiggins

I call this photo “Pod-racer part #1”

Shot using an iPhone 4S using Camera+

I took this photo on the morning of 29th May at work. A 767 required an engine change and this is the “new” engine sitting ready to be installed.
Whenever we need to change engines like this, I look at the engines and it always reminds me of a pod-racer.

Ken McGrath

I was visiting my partents-in-law on the weekend in the Burnett Region of QLD for the Goomeri Pumpkin Festival. Yes, that’s a thing, and the highlight is 600 people rolling pumpkins down a hill to see who can get theirs the furthest without it smashing.

They had a bon fire night out under the stars, and so I was doing some campfire shots and night photography. The fire was casting this beautiful flickering light onto the nearby gum-trees, which were set against a backdrop of stars you only get to see in the country.

I think my picture fits this weeks theme because each and every one of those stars is an engine in our universe – a conversion of matter to energy that powers everything we know, including all life on earth (and probably elsewhere).

So, I took the shot with my Cannon T1i (D500), EFS 18-55 lens, F/3,5, ISO3200 and 30 second exposure on the “shutter priority” setting. I adusted the lighting setting in Picasa to increase the fill light and shadow to make the stars pop and add some drama.

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