How To: Take a good car photo!

[Anphrax]

Some of the pictures are missing but I think it is an old thread. originally here: The OFFICIAL Automotive Photography TIPS & TECHNIQUES | Resource Guide - M3Forum.com Discussion Boards

Could be helpful to some peopel ( like the color??? )






Some automotive photography tips I want to share; originally posted by Shinobi@E46Fanatics and I added several more tips:

1. Light Management Part I: First thing you should know is that there are optimal light conditions you should strive for when taking a photo (outside of a studio that is). The best light is early in the morning or late in the evening. Its generally referred to as "magic light". Colors are better, contrast is not as intense and shadows are softer as opposed to the light at high noon. Here is an excellent example of this:

Good Light: Warm colors, with smooth soft shadows


Bad Light: Light way too intense and colors are washed out



2. Light Management Part II: Another ideal condition to take photos is an overcast day, where the light is naturally soft, is not coming from any one direction and there is little to no shadow.

Good Light: This is my car BTW. Very little editing required, because the light was very good to begin with.



3. Light Management Part III: As much as possible...have the light BEHIND you. You want the colors of your car to come out so you need the light on the car, not against it. If you take a photo with the light in front of you, you'll have to use a flash. Otherwise, you'll get shadows instead.

Good Angle: Here the blue color seems normal


Bad Angle 1: At a different angle, the same color is now lighter and washed out


Bad Angle 2: The blue is muted because you're taking a picture of the car's shadow instead


Do not just park the car and walk around it to take photos. At some point, you will be facing the light and taking a picture of the car's shadow.
WORK WITH THE LIGHT, NOT AGAINST IT.

Another example, a picture of my old E39 M5:




4. Depth of Field. There are two main factors that enable you to control the depth of field in a photograph - the focal length of a lens and the aperture (measured in f-stops/f-numbers). The longer the focal length and the wider the aperture (lower f-numbers), the less depth of field (shallow DOF) you'll end up with. Wide aperture makes the background to blur and drawing the attention to the subject.
Here's an example:




5. Shutter Speed. Use slower shutter speed if you want to capture movement or if you're shooting in a low light environment.
I use a 1/5 second shutter speed for this picture:



6. Composition. A photo with the perfect lighting can look like crap with bad composition. Photography is art, so alot of it is imaginative and subjective, but some key things to remember are:

- Balance. If you have an element on one side, try to duplicate that or complement it on the other side. Here is a good example of that. The car is a little off centered, but you get the idea. The lighting here is excellent:




- Background. Make the effort to find a nice background for your photo.
Its very difficult to manage a background after the fact (unless you're a PS wizard), so its better to find a good location.
Avoid taking photos in common areas like your garage or driveway. Go out and look.
Keep it tidy. Do your best to avoid distracting elements in a shot. If you can't help it, they can be photoshopped out later.
For example, I photoshopped the light pole above the car and the one on the left and ended up with a cleaner picture:

Before:


After:


Also, an ideal background should have some colors that contrast the color of the car.
The green grass in this pic is a perfect contrast to a black car.



Here's another example of my M3:




- Rule of Thirds. By far the most widely used approach to composition is where the frame is divided into nine equally sized boxes using two vertical and two horizontal lines. The strongest four points in the frame are where the intersections of the lines occur, and any subject placed at these points will always have a strong visual appeal.
Here are some examples:






- Angles. As far as what angles of the car are good to take, you should browse through various car pics you can find. If you find an angle that appeals to you, then try to copy it. You can also use various lens types to achieve different effects.


7. Post-Processing. It's easy to take a photo and then manipulate it with Photoshop. Image editing with Photoshop is a whole other thing. Here are just couple basic tips:

- Use Photoshop to edit out distracting elements. That would include things in the background like trash cans, light poles, etc. Also, if you are taking pics on a parking lot, you can remove the parking lines. Edit out things on your car too, like paint chips and scuffs.

- Crop for perfect composition (reframe). To crop more subtly (when shooting), use your zoom lens to move in a little closer to the subject, removing distracting matter from peripheral areas of the photo.

- Use a noise-reduction program (third-party filter) like NoiseNinja to get much smoother surfaces or after shooting with high ISO (ISO 800 or more).

- Use Smart Sharpen filter for better result sharpening the subject. This should be the last step on image post-processing.

- Adjust Contrast or Levels for deeper dark colors and Saturation to bring out bright ones.

- And the most important: DO NOT put too much contrast on a picture.
Remember to AVOID blown-out highlights (whites) and loss of details (blacks).

For example, there's too much contrast in this picture, you can not see the details on the tires at all and also blown highlights - only whites appear on the sky:



Loss of details in blacks:



Whereas, you can clearly see the details of the tires in this pic without losing contrast:



Please feel free to add more tips & techniques with examples.
I will probably add couple more later that I didn't cover like moving shot and low light photography.

[ragincanadian4]

Good find.

[Kansas]

nice tutorial, time to head out with the d40

[Nealio]

Very sticky worthy!

[BShark]

Originally Posted by Nealio

Very sticky worthy!

I double that, this is definitely going to earn you some karma for posting it here

[Anphrax]

Whatever karma I get I will surely get de-karma'd for posting it out of a M3 website

Anyway, I found the link while wasting my pathetic life on the internet...

Max Thrane’s Cyberspace » Anything related to Max Thrane’s real life, expiriences and so on… is where i found the link, and while im at it... i shall plug my site: A really cool name...

[jewels318]

wow.. forced induction on m3's is the

i love that shot of the wheel on the dyno.
do you have a high resolution pic of that? for a wallpaper?
i'm sick of my wave..

[Anphrax]

lol, not mine but im sure you could google

[xtreme17]

Great post!
I think if you keep adding to the first post in this thread, and sticky it to the top of the gallery page, more photos on here will start to look really nice!
PS: Karma'd

[Anphrax]

cool, thanks for everything guys

it feels good, this is my first sticky

[theladyboo]

Oh dang it that car is going to look good in any photo. Thanks for the tips.