A candy apple red CSC-250…

The factory folks recently finished a heavily-accessorized candy-apple red CSC-250, and I thought I would grab a few shots and share this beauty with you.

Before I do, and while you’re wondering about that gray block on the right, let me tell you a bit about what I did here.   Modern digital cameras have the capability of adjusting the color for the light in which the photograph was taken.  It’s called white balance, and the idea is to select the right white balance so that the resulting photo most nearly matches what you actually saw when you took the photo (in particular, we’re talking about colors).    The camera has settings for sunlight, shade, incandescent lighting, flourescent lighting, or you can select “A” (for automatic) and the camera will sort of figure it all out.   Most of the time, I just leave the white balance adjustment on “A” (because I am absolutely lazy).

One time I was with a friend of mine in San Felipe on one of our motorcycle adventures during the Baja 1000.  There were lots of race cars in the hotel parking lot, and the parking lot had these high intensity sodium lights.   We tried to get some decent photos, but none of the white balance color settings on the Nikon resulted in a photo that matched what we were seeing.   The pictures all looked too orange.   The sodium lights were confusing the camera.  That’s when I remembered the custom white balance setting (I had learned about it in a Nikon course a few weeks earlier).

The deal works like this:   You turn the color balance setting to “Pre” (which I guess somehow means custom) and shoot a photo of a plain piece of white or gray paper.   The camera takes the photo and thinks deep thoughts about it, and then self-adjusts its internal thought process  to compensate for whatever lighting existed for the photo of the white or gray paper.   We tried that, and son of a gun, we got a great photo!

Okay, okay, I know…this is not a photography website.   The only reason I’m telling you this story is that I used that approach again this week and I shot a few photos of this awesome red CSC-250 that Lupe and crew assembled.   The factory is complicated from a lighting perspective…we’ve got sunlight, fluorescent lights, incandescent lights, and I suppose the natural glow of light reflected from my bald noggin.   So I dusted off the instructions on the custom white balance setting, shot that white piece of paper (that’s the gray image you see above), and wow!   The resulting photos exactly duplicate what the bike looks like!

So here you go…this custom red 250 has it all…chrome everywhere, custom exhaust, chromed aluminum billet wheels, LED turn signals, a rack, billet mirrors, and lots more.   Feast your eyes, boys and girls!

Good stuff, and good stuff to know.

It’s raining cats and dogs out here today…it sure was good timing to get our ride in with the boys from Motorcycle.com magazine yesterday!   Stay tuned for more on that story in the near future.

Ride safe, everyone.