Do you want to turn the boring shots of your car into more spectacular photographs that will look great on the wall of your room? Here are some tips.
Steps
Step 1. Use the right settings
You can get more in-depth information by reading this article, but the following are the basics:
-
Make sure the white balance matches the ambient light. Or, just shoot in RAW and fix it on your computer afterwards. As you prefer.
Image An example of wrong settings; the image was taken with the previous evening's settings, ie set for tungsten light. This way the image is all blue. Do not do it! Adjusting the white balance will greatly enhance any photo.
- Keep the ISO low. If there is no movement and you can use a tripod, you don't need this.
-
Shoot in aperture priority. This way you can shoot at maximum image sharpness and control depth of field. Don't worry about this if your camera doesn't have this mode or you can't use it, just shoot in Program (P).
Image Aperture Priority gives you control over depth of field and lets you shoot at the aperture of the lens which gives the ultimate in sharpness.
Step 2. Choose a focal length
Cars have photographic personalities like people. Just as some people do best at a distance with a telephoto lens and others with a wide angle for closer shots, different cars look more beautiful at different zoom settings. Think of the car as a person: do you want to exaggerate their physical characteristics, or put them in the background?
-
The wide angle exaggerates the characteristics of the car.
Is it an aggressive car? Then zoom in and get closer. This exaggerates the perspective.
Don't get too close unless you know what you're doing. A 28mm equivalent focal length is more than enough most of the time. A lens larger than this will give you a photo of a headlight with a tiny car attached to it (may even be what you're after; read on!).
Image If your car is more aggressive, like this Range Rover, you may want to choose a more extreme wide angle to emphasize the vehicle's characteristics.
-
A normal to telephoto lens will do the opposite: will make the vehicle look more elegant. This is the best choice for simpler cars, as a longer focal length makes people look more beautiful. You can experiment with digital as well as analog, so don't hesitate to try both.
Image A longer focal length often makes cars look more beautiful, as do people. This was shot with a 50mm lens, which is effectively a short telephoto lens on a non-full frame camera.
Note how the reflections of the sky disturb the exposure; the rest of the car is well displayed but the hood is mostly white.
Step 3. Take shine into account
Sometimes it can be difficult to have uniform exposure throughout the car. The bodywork (hopefully shiny!) Reflects the sky in some parts, as does the windshield, which is extremely bright compared to other parts of the vehicle. In addition to lighting, there are other ways to avoid it:
-
Use a polarizing filter if you have one.
This will eliminate the reflections. If you don't have it, you might think about buying it. They are cheap (even cheap ones work great) and are among the most useful filters in digital photography.
-
Take photos at different apertures.
You need a tripod for this, because the images must be perfectly identical. Take a normal exposure photo, then another overexposed and an underexposed photo. You can also do this by setting the camera to compensate for exposure, or in bracketing mode, if your camera allows it. You can then use layer masks in your image post-production program to insert parts from underexposed and overexposed photos to the normally exposed one.
Image Bracket: A normal, underexposed and overexposed photo. Portions of the darker photo can be digitally inserted into the overexposed areas of the normal-exposed photo. See in particular the highlights, which have no detail in the normally exposed photo.
Wait for people to get out of the frame.
Step 4. Eliminate all distractions from the vehicle, just as you would eliminate the distracting elements from a person's photo
If you're at an auto show, wait for people to step out of the frame before shooting. Clean the scene of crap. Try not to snap in front of a phone booth, otherwise the booth will appear to be sticking out of the car. Also avoid putting too much sky in the image; the photo will most likely have an annoying light blue or white part if you don't use a neutral density filter. If you can choose the place to take the photo, it is often a good idea to position yourself in front of buildings or other structures that can block the sky.
A technically adequate but boring photograph of a Toyota Celica GT. It's boring because it was taken at eye level.
Step 5. Do not shoot at eye level
Try kneeling or standing on something to go taller than fifty centimeters, or anything that allows you to have a point of view that isn't eye-level like everyone else does.
Try this instead:
-
Kneel in front of the car.
This will give it an aggressive look, which "breaks the target".
-
Place the camera on the ground.
Photographing a car from a very low angle (and raising the frame a little) will give a unique point of view that is not often seen.
-
Get close and go specific.
Find more interesting or unique features or curves of the car, then photograph the details from different angles.
-
Take photos from above.
Try framing from above, or even just holding the camera above your head. This will allow both to have a unique and interesting angle, and to have different sides of the car (side, nose, roof) in the same photograph.
A Toyota Celica GT-Four, shot with a Nikon D2H and 18-70mm DX, using an Android phone's flash to lighten the shadows in the front of the car. Notice how the streetlights are shaped like stars, which is achieved by shooting at f / 11.
Step 6. Try taking pictures at night under artificial light
You will need a tripod and maybe even a remote shutter or a timer.
Step 7. Set the aperture to f / 8 or f / 11
This will turn the bright spots into multi-pointed stars.
- Make sure your camera's ISOs aren't set automatically, and shoot at the lowest ISOs you can.
- Look at the lighting on the car. Artificial light produces very sharp shadows on parts of the car that need to be lightened by your lighting. You will get used to it once you realize that you can see the shadows better than your camera.
- Remove the flash from the camera. If it has an internal flash, use a compact, cellphone or old flash and run around the vehicle turning on the flash to lighten the shadows. A longer exposure will give you more time to do this, which is another reason to shoot at f / 8 or f / 11.
- You could make the photo black and white once done. Artificial external light (especially sodium vapor) is quite monochromatic, so you will find that the image is already almost black and white once the uniform color (such as the yellow of street lamps) is removed. Plus, you have the advantage of not having to worry about putting color filters on the flash to balance the artificial lighting.
Step 8. Take various photos
Anyone who wants to buy a used car wants to have as much information as possible. Make sure your photos tell a story about your car - five or six photos is a great number.
Isolate a unique feature of a vehicle. Can you figure out what car it is?
Step 9. Try to tighten the shot by isolating a single instantly recognizable feature of the car
It can be a headlight or a curve of the bodywork or a detail of the radiator grille with a headlight.
Step 10. Edit your photos with a photomanipulation program
If you don't have one, download it. [GIMP] is free. Here are some tricks that may help you:
- Use layer masks on an underexposed version of the image to integrate parts onto the overexposed one (see above for bracketing).
-
Adjust the contrast. You will almost certainly need to increase it. One way that often works perfectly for cars is to duplicate the image as a layer, set the layer mode to "Soft Light", desaturate it, then change the opacity as you like. This also has the effect of adjusting the colors of the lights.
Image Contrast was increased with GIMP by duplicating the bottom layer, desaturate the new layer, and setting it to "Soft Light" mode. Some background noise has also been removed.
-
Darken the corners a little to focus attention on the car and away from the rest. Don't be an amateur wedding photographer in this case; it should be mild enough that you only notice it if you look for it.
Image Darkening the corners forces attention to the subject. In this case too much has been done for illustrative purposes: the effect should instead be much lighter.
- Remove any other nuisance you didn't notice. It can be garbage for example. In these cases, the clone stamp is useful.
Warnings
- Often a vehicle owner's permission is not legally required if it's parked in a public place, but it's usually a good idea to be polite and ask for it anyway.
- Likewise, many car owners may feel uncomfortable if photos go around the internet with license plates prominently displayed. It may seem pointless, but a few more seconds in Photoshop (or GIMP) will calm them down.
