Armin’s Quick and Dirty Tips and Tricks to Automotive Photography

[Max713]

Originally Posted by 07LegacyGT

3 more of my past motorsport images

That second shot... WIN!
If only it wasn't cropped quite so tight on the right side of the car.

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[07LegacyGT]

Originally Posted by Max713

That second shot... WIN!
If only it wasn't cropped quite so tight on the right side of the car.

pretty sure i was standing on the left side of the car with the camera vertical. i dont think its cropped at all, i was a few years ago so idk. they wouldnt let me stand directly behind the cars.

[INKMAN]

Originally Posted by Smurftastic

Thoughts?

The lighting is super harsh on these. Always try to avoid direct sunlight.

[uspopo]

I gotta upgrade to a digital camera with some more features so I can tweak the settings more for some good picture taking. I don't think my Canon SX10IS will cut it plus I don't think I can use a screw on filter either.

[INKMAN]

Does the camera you have now have a manual mode? I'm not famliar with that model.

Oh, and you can still take a crappy picture with a good camera! I've done it hundreds of times!

[uspopo]

Yes it does so I can play with the aperature and shutter speed settings. The Canon lense is not removable but it does take great shots!

[INKMAN]

Well there you go. Put it in msnual, get yourself some good lighting and practice with all the different settings to see how they effect things.

Here's an example of a picture in auto with my T2i. This picture sucks.




And here's one in manual after months of practice. Still not great but much improved.

[uspopo]

What lense were you using? prime?

[INKMAN]

The first was shot with my 18-55, the second was with my 55-250. I do have a 50mm prime but I don't use it for car shots.

Not that it had anything to do with the quality of these pictures.

[uspopo]

Thanks!

[INKMAN]

No problem! Read through this thread, there is a ton of helpfull stuff in here!

[SkimSTI]

Armin.... think the crop is a bit too tight? went back to edit this for a buddy, who misses this car a ton. the original was hella-JDM angled (and tightly cropped) so by straightening it a bit, i lost some of the edge..

[Verdugo]

Originally Posted by 07LegacyGT

non subaru...

Awesome capture, but I"m not sold on the HDR-ish look to it. Do you have any different versions?

[Verdugo]

Originally Posted by SkimSTI

i effing love porsche GT3's. i went with a little more saturation on this edit. what do you guys think?

Originally Posted by 07LegacyGT

i dont think adding a lil saturation is a bad thing, ive done it w a lot of my motorsport photos. only problem i see here is your backroudn is a lil yellow and so is the car, so it doesn't pop as well on the backround as it could

I agree, the yellow car doesn't pop as much with the tones and color of the background. I think you know what to do next

[Verdugo]

Originally Posted by INKMAN

Thanks for the tips! I think my editing skills, or lack there of have a big impact on my photos. I know you always say garbage in garbage out wich is true but I think it would help me if I knew what direction to go in with editing. Any tips in that department. It's not something you can google because every situation and photo is different. Does it just come down to experience or trial and error?

I usually try to avoid giving too many suggestions for processing on this thread simply because the whole idea behind this thread is to give tips and tricks for the basics, like exposure and composition. Plus, on top of that, everyone usually develops their own editing style and if it works for them, I've really got no place to say if it's right or wrong. However, so long as the exposure and composition work together with the style of editing, everything should work out just fine. Once editing goes a bit overboard, then it often ruins exposure and other basics.

It really is something that requires some trial and error. Hell, I've been doing this for years now and I'm still developing and honing my editing styles/skills. But, as long as you start with a good capture, you're already on the right track.

[INKMAN]

Yeah you definitely are right. I'm trying to develop my own style, I just don't know what it is yet.

I'm kinda proud of these. I know the location is not ideal but I feel the look of the photos is much cleaner.

[Verdugo]

Originally Posted by INKMAN

I went back to the same location as last week to try to get some better lighting and maybe some better angles. I also tried some different stuff with my editing that I don't normally do. Let me know if you think these are better than the last set. Thanks!

These look great! You're really showing marked improvement with every post. I'd say your first one is the strongest of the three. If the car was lower in the frame so that we'd see more of the trees and less of the parking lines, it would help the photo quite a bit. I'd probably do a tighter crop on the front-face shot, just because there's a lot of unnecessary space around the car...tighter like this:



I like where you're going with the last shot, but I don't like how it's 50% car, and 50% space...if you went rule of thirds instead, so that it's either 1/3 car 2/3 space or 2/3 car and 1/3 space, it would help the composition a lot.

Editing-wise, I think you're definitely doing well. Red is a very difficult color for most cameras to capture correctly...it always seems to overexpose itself, so maybe a slight adjustment to turn down the exposure might help. If you can change the luminance of the red specifically (you can in LR and Adobe Camera RAW), I think it'll help the red look more close to reality and not quite as washed out.

[Verdugo]

Originally Posted by Blest-

Buddy shot this with his D7K but I edited it, first time messing around with Lightroom.


I might pickup a Canon t2i soon

Looks good, pretty clean shot, but not the most ideal location. I'm not sure if it's just me, but it also kinda looks like the car is slightly leaning down toward the right.

[Verdugo]

Originally Posted by xluben

Finally got a circular polarizer. Took it out and played around a little. This animation shows the effects it can have.

When I actually chose my favorite shots, I didn't necessarily go with the ones that got rid of the most reflections. Sometimes I think the reflections add to the shot. I chose the ones that showed the lines of the car the best. In the future I'll have to keep playing around with this. Here's one of the shots I processed.

On a 3/4 shot I think you'd have to composite two images if you really wanted to kill all of the reflections. Sometime I think I'll have to give it a shot. I can certainly see times when you would want a perfectly clean image, with no glare at all.

Nice animation and nice shot! With black cars especially, it's important to use reflections to show the lines of the car, since the black is going to absorb most light anyway. I almost always composite two photos to kill reflections, but many people I know go even farther and take over a dozen shots to kill all the reflections possible and then composite away. That's a bit overkill for me personally, but if that's what they have to do to get the results they're after, more power to them. Typically, that'll be the case when they're doing shots for commercial purposes and when they're going to be compositing the car into a completely new background anyway.

Here's a shot from my friend Andrew Link of RIDES Magazine...I didn't envy him for having to deal with these reflections:

[Verdugo]

Originally Posted by 07LegacyGT

3 more of my past motorsport images

Originally Posted by Max713

That second shot... WIN!
If only it wasn't cropped quite so tight on the right side of the car.

Yep, I agree wholeheartedly with Max here. Definitely good captures, but I understand you couldn't do much with the crop on that second shot. I like the last shot especially too, but I wish that the rumble strip wasn't cut off on the left side.

[Verdugo]

Originally Posted by Smurftastic

Thoughts?

Originally Posted by INKMAN

The lighting is super harsh on these. Always try to avoid direct sunlight.

Yeah, you've got some really harsh lighting here. It also looks like you took these from standing eye level. Get low or get high...just don't use a perspective that we'd normally see as we just walk by a car. The locations you chose definitely have some potential, but you just need to work on your exposure and composition first.

[Verdugo]

Originally Posted by SkimSTI

Armin.... think the crop is a bit too tight? went back to edit this for a buddy, who misses this car a ton. the original was hella-JDM angled (and tightly cropped) so by straightening it a bit, i lost some of the edge..

I think the crop is fine, although I might even try to straighten it a tiny bit more if possible, then adjust the right side of the frame to equal it out. Since it's a black car with a lighter background, I think you can add even more contrast as well. Time to start playing with curves?

[Verdugo]

Originally Posted by INKMAN

Yeah you definitely are right. I'm trying to develop my own style, I just don't know what it is yet.

I'm kinda proud of these. I know the location is not ideal but I feel the look of the photos is much cleaner.

Oh, these are way better. You've got consistent lighting now, so the color looks a lot better than the first batch of this car that you posted. I might bump the white balance a little tiny bit to the warm side, but you're definitely getting there. On the first photo, I'd clone out the parking lines in the foreground and I might even clone over the tree trunks and branches in the second photo.

[INKMAN]

Sweet! Thanks for the advice! I will work on them later.

[rsutton1223]

I personally love this photo of a friend of mine at Road Atlanta that I took. I absolutely hate that I do not seem to have the adequate Photoshop skills to remove the pole in the picture. I do not know why I can't seem to get it right...frustrated...


The Champ by rsutton198 | oneninty8.com, on Flickr