How to take good pictures

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Chase Race
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How to take good pictures

Post by Chase Race »

I'm continuing the photo discussion from here: phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=2897

The common problem with garage photography is that, as Shaun said, "Everything always looks dark except where the flash hits it dead on." There is a simple solution to this that will work on every camera. Turn off the flash. Seriously. Here's an example.

Flash on:
Image

Flash off:
Image

You can see that the lighting looks much more natural in the photo without the flash. When the flash is turned on, the camera sets the shutter speed to a specific value, usually around 1/60 sec to 1/100 sec depending on the camera. Because point and shoot cameras have wimpy flashes that only reach 10-12 feet, everything closer than this is bright and everything further away is dark.

When the flash is turned off, then the camera adjusts the shutter speed (and aperature) to the correct value for the ambient light in the room. The only problem is that the shutter speed may be too slow for you to hold the camera. The easy solution to this is to buy a tripod. You don't need a good tripod for a little plastic camera that weighs less than 1lb. You can get a cheap tripod for around $20. An added benefit to owning a tripod is that, as jstillwell / Stimpy said here: "chicks dig the sensitive, artistic type who is in to photography. Tripod=art modeling. No tripod= just trying to take dirty pictures."

Another example.

Set up the tripod:
Image

Flash on:
Image

Flash off:
Image


You don't need a good camera to do this. All you need is the ability to turn off the flash. My shop camera is a 3 year old 2 megapixel Fuji that can be had for about $50 on ebay. With a small number of exceptions, almost every shop picture I've posted has been taken with this camera.
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Post by Kohburn »

yeah all the pics on my website www.viscoustech.com except customer cars were taken with a 50$ 3megapixel camera
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Post by Aaron »

Alright. TIme for me to buy a tripod.

My camera is a pretty new Olympus FE-100 with 2.8x optical zoom (I have no idea what all that means). It is a 4.0 megapixle (I do know what those are). I'm good at taking crappy pics, damn good. Almost better than Shaun.

I have a threaded hole on the bottomside of my camera, I'm guessing this is for the tripod. I'll look around Ebay. Thanks Doug, good writeup!

Alright, see a few on eBay, will these work with my camera?

http://cgi.ebay.com/SUNPAK-2001-UT-TRIP ... dZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/SUNPAK-200I-UT-TRIP ... dZViewItem
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Post by Mach10 »

Olympus makes a very decent camera. The problem with them is that the user-menus seem to have been invented by drugged, dyslexic monkeys. I have yet to see a user-friendly Olympus digital, when you compare them to the likes of Canon or Nikon.

4meg will be fine for pretty much any standard pictures. For those out shopping, bear in mind that the optics on 99.9% of handheld pocket-cameras won't really take advantage of the resolution of much more than 4mpx.

Digital Zoom is gay. Period. 2x digital zoom means you just cut your resolution in half. Optical is better, since you will have more detail. There is some detail loss (for the truly anal), but remember that photons are a LOT smaller than CCD pixels. You can afford to lose more of them before you take a measurable hit to picture quality.

If you want GREAT pictures, there is no substitute for film (but only if you know what you're doing). A high-res digital SLR will rock ass, but even the 9 megapixel cameras aren't quite at the resolution as a high-quality ISO100 35mm, although it will be more than adequate for 99% of private photography. And when you are talking about larger professional-type film, there's no comparison at all ;)

I'll match my Olympus OM-2 up against ANY digital camera on the market, for a given fixed-environment photo shoot. But for almost everything else, the pictures will look better on a digital SLR, simply because you can adjust on the fly if your previews don't look right, and you can bang off 100 pics in the time it takes me to crank, wind, and reload two rolls of 16-exp film.

My Nikon S-70 will come closer. It's got a nice big lens which makes for some GREAT pictures. And it's flexible. My complaint is that the brand-new S70 feels light and flimsy compared to the battle-scarred tank that is my OM2. You could (and the old ads for olympus showed people actually doing this) chuck it down a mountain side, pick it up, peel off the shattered lens, put a new one on, and still take a useable picture.

I'm worried that the lens might fall off the S70 if I sneezed with it hung on a shoulder-strap.

when I travel, and the pics are outdoors, I take my OM2 :)
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Post by Shaun41178(2) »

Good post doug. Couldnt' have said it better. Thanks.
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Post by stimpy »

Aaron wrote:
Alright, see a few on eBay, will these work with my camera?

http://cgi.ebay.com/SUNPAK-2001-UT-TRIP ... dZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/SUNPAK-200I-UT-TRIP ... dZViewItem
If your camera has a female thread on the bottom of the body, it will work with any tripod. It's a universal mount.
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Post by Aaron »

stimpy wrote: If your camera has a female thread on the bottom of the body, it will work with any tripod. It's a universal mount.
Oh, it is definately female. Yeaaahhhhhhh.

In all seriousness, it is. Thanks for the help, I'll probably pick one up when it gets closer to summer.
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Post by crzyone »

Good post, I tried the no flash and a steady object to put my camera on and it was a pretty big difference.

No flash, and holding it in my hands
Image

No flash and sitting on a chair
Image

And one more, holding it in my hand and a flash
Image
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Post by Aaron »

In your situation I like the falsh best, but you don't really have a background to show. So I appreicate the added detail and visibility of the parts, even if the light is unnatural.
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Post by crzyone »

I agree, because I'm taking pictures fairly close up. I just wanted to show the difference between holding it with your hands and using a steady surface.
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Post by The Dark Side of Will »

I think of photography like shooting a gun. You wouldn't get good results with a gun if you casually lifted it and pulled the trigger. In order to have good accuracy, you need the correct body position, which is also necessary with a camera. I go to pains to make sure my handheld shots are as still as possible.... pull my elbows in and brace against my ribcage; put my arms on something whenever possible, etc.
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Post by Chase Race »

The next lesson is about Macro.

Another common screw up that's easy to fix is when you try to take a close up picture and it comes out blurry. Most cameras have a macro function. Turning on macro tells the camera to focus really close. What's "really close"? On most cameras anything closer than about 2 feet benefits from turning Macro on. To find out what this distance is for your camera, read the manual or try it out and see what happens.

Macro has an icon of a flower which is pretty well standardized. If you see the flower, you're in macro mode. Example:

I'll use the shop camera to take a picture of this spark plug. The business cards are there to prop up the camera because I'm using the tripod on the other camera (the one that's taking these pics). You can see that the spark plug is only a few inches away from the camera:
Image


Here we are ready to take a picture in non-macro mode:
Image

And here's how that picture turns out. Fuzzy and out of focus:
Image

Now I'll turn macro on. On a lot of cameras it has its own dedicated button marked with a flower. In my camera it's in a menu but it's still marked with the flower icon. That's what the arrow is pointing at:
Image

Now the flower icon shows up on the screen indicating that you are in macro mode:
Image

Here's how the picture turns out with macro turned on. Quite a difference compared to the above picture, isn't it?
Image
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Post by stimpy »

Great stuff on taking close ups and the small stuff.

Another good bit of advice if you want to take good pictures is to take LOTS of pictures. I have a 1 gig card on my camera, so I always try to remember to have it with me and ready to go for that lucky shot.

This is one prime example of the lucky shot that you have to work a little for. I took this picture on a February afternoon where 14 miles up the coast it was grey and overcast, and I followed this car through 2 parking lots and about 2 miles to pull aside this car and take the picture through the passenger window past my wife. I only had 2 shots, and this is the untouched, uncropped 1st shot.
Image



Image
Then this shot I was taking pictures of a picture shoot of a hot model in a fur coat and not much of a cocktail dress in a Lamborghini Murcielago roadster when I turned around and got this lucky shot by accident.
Image
No traffic? Passing probably the ONLY two empty parking spaces in Pacific Grove? Getting a :thumbleft: how cool was THAT?

Image
Taken while walking back to the car from breakfast. Cruising by at 15-25 mph.

Image
Another car gets in the way of me getting any decent shots of the Murcielago.

Image
This guy was nice enough to pump his brakes when he saw me driving and snapping in the opposite lane.

Image
Holding my camera straight up outside the sunroof at 85 mph on Highway 1 north of Monterey.


Keep snappin', and show the good ones.
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Post by VR6in »

1) Color Photography is about LOTS of LIGHT--not shadow--LIGHT--and

2) V is BAD, H is GOOD.

That is to say:

Vertical light (e.g., high-angle, high-in-the-sky sunlight) is BAD.
Horizontal light (e.g., low-angle, rising/setting sun--AND your fill flash--is GOOD.

Color photography is about LIGHT. LIGHT. It is not, repeat NOT, about shadow. LIGHT. Light, dammit, light. And your camera needs MUCH MORE light to "see your car" than your eyes do. It needs lots of smooth, evenly-distributed, horizontal or low-angle light Once more: color photography is about LIGHT. You don't get photographs by shooting in harsh, glaring midday high-angle sunlight (you get color-faded paint on the top surfaces, harsh, murky shadows in the lower regions, and a thoroughly bleached-out cockpit), and you don't get photographs by shooting the shadow side of your car.


You get snapshots. Crappy snapshots.

Unfortunately, almost 100% of the time that you're setting up to shoot your car (or your family, or your house) out in the bright sunlight, the sunlight is in ALL the wrong places. You're confronting a mélange of harsh glare and harsh shadows. On this page you'll learn how to position your car and schedule your outdoor shoot (or, alternatively, to engage your camera's flash) so that you'll end up with top-notch photographs--instead of birdcage-liner snapshots.

Once again: color photography is about LIGHT. Ideally, lots of soft, evenly-distributed, horizontal, low-angle, even upward-reflected (bounced off of white concrete pavement, for example) light. And your camera requires far more light than your eyes do. For photographing YOUR car, lots of light translates to LOTS of (dawn, dusk or overcast) sunlight.

Setting your camera controls: set your dial for "aperture priority" mode (anything but "AUTO") and for most of your shots, your camera's flash unit should be set on FORCED (lightning-bolt icon on most cameras) mode (again, not (repeat: NOT) "automatic flash." You're going to be using your flash for the lion's share of your motorcar shots.

Beware: some bargain-basement modern cameras do not offer "forced flash,"
and confusingly display this lightning-bolt icon to indicate "automatic flash."

When I advise you to "Use your flash," I mean "Force your flash to work." Forced flash (also referred to as 'fill flash' is perhaps the most photo-improving feature on your modern camera (whether it's a film or a digital camera).

Forced flash/fill flash is THE ONLY MODE of flash for you to employ out in the sunlight. If you insist upon relying upon "automatic flash" when you're outdoors in the sunlight, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200, and Do Not Expect Your "automatic" Flash to Work. IT WILL NOT.

Force your flash to work each time you're photographing
people or an automobile outdoors. Furthermore:

Force your flash to work for EACH AND EVERY ONE of your cockpit and engine shots.
Force your flash to work for EACH AND EVERY ONE of your cockpit and engine shots.

"But," you say, "I don't need to use my flash. I've got lots of overhead sunlight."

Force your flash to work for EACH AND EVERY ONE of your cockpit and engine shots.

For ALMOST ALL of your
midday (±9:00-5:00) photographs of your car, FORCE YOUR FLASH TO WORK.

Footnote: in spite of these redundant admonitions for you to FORCE YOUR FLASH TO WORK when you're shooting your car (or your family) out in the sunlight, hardly a single day passes that someone doesn't say to me


"I guess my flash worked... I had it set on automatic,"
-or-
"My flash is always 'on', and my camera decides when it's needed."

Wrong answers. "My flash is always on" translates to "automatic flash," which means it's not engaging/not working for your outdoor photography. Disregard "always on" and set your camera to FORCED/FILL flash when you're out-of-doors.

For your outdoor fill-flash photography,
you don't let your camera "DECIDE" anything.

YELLOW CAR ADVISORY #1: You cannot (repeat: CANNOT) shoot your yellow car out in midday sunlight. All you're likely to get is bleached-out top surfaces and murky/ orangish lower areas... gen'rlly makin' a mess of your gorgeous yellow paint job. If you insist upon shooting your yellow car out in the sun, you MUST time your photo session for either dawn or dusk... with the (low, unobstructed) sun at your back, and with your car properly rotated so that the sun's rays are illuminating all of your car facing your camera (in a 3/4 view pose, that means the sun MUST BE illuminating both the side AND the front of your car).

YELLOW CAR ADVISORY #2: Here's a piece of concrete advice: park your car on white concrete, so that you'll benefit from the upward-reflected sunlight and skylight; this strategy often works splendidly with yellow cars.

YELLOW CAR ADVISORY #3: Shoot your yellow car in the shade: although you can photograph your yellow car in direct dawn or dusk sunlight (i.e., near-horizontal sunrays) and get good results, your best game plan may be to take all of your photos (listen carefully!): at mid-morning or mid-afternoon, entirely within the "clean" shade of a building or other solid obstruction (not, repeat NOT in the uneven/splotchy shade of a tree, and NOT in your garage), on clean pavement, and use your flash on every single shot of 1) your entire car, 2) your engine, and 3) your cockpit.


Now once more: for your YELLOW car: wait until mid-morning or mid-afternoon, move your car entirely into clean shade of a building... or a mountain... Ayers Rock, Rockefeller Center or The Great Pyramid of Giza... and on clean pavement, preferably white concrete. And use your flash on every single shot.

If you follow those three simple guidelines, you're almost certain
to capture superb, richly-colored images of your yellow car!

The three worst mistakes a novice makes
when photographing his/her car:

Mistake #1: Bright overhead sunlight. Not good. Harsh overhead sunlight (and worse, the corollary harsh shadows caused by overhead sunlight) wrecks more motorcar photos than anything else. Solution: wait 'til near sunset and position (i.e., rotate) your car to take full advantage of that softer light. Direct sunlight as a light source improves steadily as those rays approach horizontal... as long as you rotate your car so that those horizontal rays are lighting up ALL of your car's surfaces facing the camera. Alternative: wait for an overcast day and take advantage of that softer light. Take each of your outdoor shots TWICE: once with your flash unit forced to work, and once without flash. You'll discover that, almost invariably, your best shots will be the ones with the complementary illumination provided by your flash. IF YOUR CAR HAS A METALLIC PAINT JOB, you'd do well to ignore "overcast day" light, and instead opt for dawn/dusk clear sunlight, since that direct/ low-angle sunlight will serve to "bring to life" the "glistening effects" of your metallic paint job.

Mistake #2: Park your car in Paducah, then back up to Baffin Bay to snap your shutter. Not good. Solution: back up the proper distance, then zoom-in and "fill the frame" with automobile. Your objective is to photograph motorcar, not real estate. If your photos come out 10% motorcar and 90% real estate... you're getting it all wrong. This is especially important to keep in mind if you're using a digital camera: as many as possible of those precious pixels MUST represent your motorcar, not the surrounding real estate. "Real estate" is defined herein as anything that is not motorcar.

Mistake #3: Stand up and "shoot down" on your car. Not good, and for several reasons. Are you listening? Don't stand up and shoot down on your car.

Clean your car and tires thoroughly; give your tires a rubdown with Armorall.
Park your car on (clean, unstriped) pavement. DO NOT photograph it parked on grass, unless perhaps your car is an off-road 4x4, or if you want it to look like an abandoned vehicle. Another splendid tip: use your garden hose or take along a 5-gallon (or 20 liter) container of water to wet down the entire area where you're going to position your car; this darkens the pavement and provides a "glistening" highlight effect.

Carefully position/rotate your car so that you've got evenly-distributed sunlight over ALL the surfaces of your car facing your camera (the grille, the "chin," the tires, the sides). The (dawn or dusk) sun should be directly behind you, warming your backside and illuminating ALL of the surfaces of your car facing the camera; once again, just to make sure you've got it: with the (very early or very late) sun at your back, shoot the SUNLIT side(s) of your car, not, repeat NOT the shadow side(s). If you're shooting, say, a typical "3/4-view" shot, then not only the side of the car, but the grille, the "chin" and the tire tread should be illuminated by the sun. Are we clear on that? Color photography is about LIGHT, NOT SHADOW. And if you're going to shoot different views of your car (rear, head-on/front, etc.), then STAY WHERE YOU ARE WITH THE SUN AT YOUR BACK and have a colleague "rotate" your car into the next desired position. Contrary to some folks' expectations, you cannot "walk around your car shooting photos" and expect the sun to follow you accordingly. Ol' Sol just ain't gonna follow your footsteps, folks. For evidence of this, check out the two comparative photos below:

Think of it this way: your camera MUST be aimed in the direction of your (dawn or dusk) shadow. You could mount your camera onto a tripod facing in the direction of the tripod's shadow, epoxy your tripod and the camera into fixed position, then shoot all of your views of your car by doing nothing but "rotating" your car. And you'd have ideal lighting every time. One more time: photograph ONLY the sunlit side(s) of your car; for example, if you're shooting a typical "3/4" front/side view, your car MUST be rotated/ positioned so that BOTH THE SIDE AND THE FRONT of your car are sunlit.


Crouch down and shoot at ± headlight level. As the dusk light fades, take some shots with your headlights or parking lights ON (this often results in a splendid 'highlight' effect). The doors and decks should be closed; if you're shooting for an ad, typically it's not a good idea to include models (i.e., people) in your photos; for an ad on the Internet, you should never have anyone STANDING beside your car, and your hood should be closed, since in each event you wind up with far too much "aerial real estate," thus adding to filesize and download time, with nothing at all gained on the positive side.
Use a "normal" focal-length lens, or set your zoom lens accordingly (avoid wide-angle settings except for engine, cockpit and luggage-compartment shots).
Zoom in so that you're "filling the frame" with automobile, NOT real estate.
Beware of ugly shadows and reflections on the paint surfaces (especially, avoid the chaotic shadows of shade trees!). Ideally your car should present an uncluttered surface, with shadows, glare and reflections reduced to a minimum.

If you'd like a few more pro tips, read on...

1. Make sure your car is sparkling clean. Use Armorall (or similar rubber treatment) on the tires (hint: spray your Armorall onto your towel, not on the tire, so that overspray on the pavement won't show up in your photos). Take along a bucket of cleanup/touchup items on your photo session, for on-the-scene detailing. And take along a container of water to wet down the pavement beneath and around your car.

2. Use a good 35mm camera and a standard (50mm) lens... or a good digital camera. Don't attempt to use a wide-angle or zoom or telephoto lens for motorcar photography. A wide angle lens produces too much "fisheye" distortion; your zoom or telephoto lens will tend to "abbreviate" your wheelbase. Use any good color negative or transparency film; we prefer Fujichrome (slide/transparency film) and Fujicolor (negative film) for most of our photography, but the brand you choose isn't particularly important; 200-ISO film is appropriate for most of your motorcar shooting; if you plan to use a tripod, use 100-ISO or even 50-ISO. The best place--price-wise AND selection-wise--for you to purchase Fuji film (in the U.S. and Canada) is Wal-Mart.

3. If you use a digital camera, PLEASE send us your image(s) exactly as you downloaded them from your camera... that is to say, NO EDITING, NO CROPPING, and especially NO RESAVING. We'll do all that ourselves, and we need all the data on your original digital-camera image in order to achieve the best results for you.

4. For digital images THAT you intend to keep and use for yourself, make sure that upon uploading them onto your computer, you resave them IMMEDIATELY as "TIFF" format (or ".psd" Photoshop-native format) files, before you do any editing or resaves. You see, every time you resave a "JPEG" image in an image-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop, you degrade the image (a fact that the camera makers seem to never caution folks on). You can resave your TIFF image as many times as you desire without fouling the quality. Be advised that this cautionary note refers only to RESAVES in your image-editing application; merely copying your image from one disc to another is not a problem.

If you need to display or email your final, edited image over the Internet to a friend, then make a copy of your TIFF image as a 72-ppi low- or medium-quality JPEG, and email/upload the JPEG copy. Keep your TIFF image on your hard disk as your "working original."

5. Zoom in and "fill your frame" with automobile, not real estate. This tip is all-the-more important if you're using a digital camera... you mustn't squander those precious pixels on real estate. Folks don't need or care to see your entire county, they want to see the car you've got for sale. Repeat: zoom in! Focus on the part of your car closest to your camera, and select an f-stop of between f5.6 and f16, so that all or most of your car is in focus, and avoid wide-angle zoom settings. And if you're going to use those photos on your own website, then crop out whatever real estate. You gain nothing by forcing folks to patiently download all that unnecessary real estate when all they care to see is your car.

6. If it's bright overhead sunlight (which means you've got a harsh shadows beneath your car), go fishin', not photographin'. Bright midday/mid-afternoon sunlight introduces two phenomena, both undesirable, both... ugly: 1) HARSH GLARE and 2) HARSH SHADOWS. Good automobile photography demands even, soft lighting all over and around every part of your car facing your camera. You should either wait for an overcast (cloudy) day, which provides much softer and more-evenly-distributed illumination (although you should avoid getting the cloudy/overcast sky itself into your photograph), or schedule your photo session for when the sun is low (i.e., at dawn or dusk). Be sure to shoot the sunlit side(s), not the shaded side(s). Color photography is about light, not shadow! Repeat: rotate your car so that the (dawn or dusk) sun is on the camera side!! Once again, EVERY PART OF YOUR CAR facing your camera should be lit by the sun. Have you got that yet? This means that if you're shooting a "3/4 view," with mostly the side of your car but also the front end in your viewfinder, the sun should be lighting up the grille and your tire tread just as much as the side of your car. If your car has a metallic paint job, you're best off employing dawn/dusk clear sunlight, NOT overcast day light. Reason: that direct sunlight will "bring to life" your metallic paint. Also, forcing your flash to work can similarly "bring to life" your metallic paint job, especially in relatively low-light/shade settings. When I advise you that color photography is about LIGHT, that admonition is especially true in regards to metallic paint.

There's one caveat: with all dawn/dusk shots, you must be careful to keep your own shadow off your car! But there are two things you can do to prevent your shadow from reaching your car: 1) get down on one knee and shoot from waist level (which you should be doing anyway), and 2) back up a little further from your car and zoom-in your lens a little more so that your viewfinder is still "filled with motorcar," but your shadow is no longer invading your photo.

And don't position your car under a shade tree to avoid harsh sunlight; your resulting photos will leave the impression that you painted your car in a chaotic jungle camouflage scheme; indeed, you should always be on the lookout for unwanted reflections on the body (trees and buildings and road signs can produce really wretched, chaotic reflections, especially on black and dark-colored cars... just take a look at the snapshot below). You can sometimes obtain very good results by parking in the (dawn or dusk) shade of a building, but only if there's a very bright sky overhead to provide adequate illumination... and plan on forcing your flash to work. Whatever the weather or time of day, make certain that the normal "shadow areas" (e.g., the 'chin,' the grille, the tire tread) have ample light to show up in the photo; this is one area where employing your flash attachment (and your camera's "forced-flash" feature" can often help you get a significantly better photo. Position/rotate your car for optimal lighting... on the camera side of the car! If you need to shoot the other side(s) of your car, then reposition your car NOT yourself. Take some shots with the headlamps or parking lights turned on; for your rear-end shots, have someone sit in the driver's seat with his/her foot on the brakes to light up those brake lights... yet another splendid lighting effect, especially in regards to Lamborghinis and Ferraris, with their typically large taillight fixtures

Critically important for you to grasp:

When you use your flash in the "traditional way" (i.e., to provide EXTRA/ ADDITIONAL light in, say, a darkened room or at dusk or after dark outside), you're actually providing MORE light to your film (or to your sensor array in your digital camera), since there isn't enough ambient light to for you to capture a well-illuminated photograph.

ON THE OTHER HAND, when you're outdoors in the bright sunlight where there's ample natural light, your goal is entirely different: you don't need MORE light, you need to RE-DISTRIBUTE the light. Using your camera's FORCED flash (lightning bolt icon) feature, you're merely RE-DISTRIBUTING the light, so that MORE LIGHT (your flash) illuminates those pesky dark shadow areas... while simultaneously LESS SUNLIGHT is captured that otherwise results in harsh glare on your windshield and color bleachout on the painted surfaces. Voilá, with your flash you've "softened" all that harsh glare/harsh shadow! Put another way, essentially the same amount of light winds up on your film (or sensor array)... but the light is more evenly distributed, thus usually rendering a far better photograph, whether your subject is your motorcar or a closeup of your family on the beach (see photos directly below). You've taken a photograph instead of a crappy snapshot... and the only thing you did differently was to force your camera's flash to "soften" all that harsh shadow and harsh sunlight.
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Post by Series8217 »

Excellent advice!

(but nobody else is going to read all that)
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Post by stimpy »

It needs pictures.
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Post by donk_316 »

Het i just read this thread! excellent advice! i was asking around on other forums recently and no one would give me any info... thanks!
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Re: How to take good pictures

Post by Series8217 »

Use a tripod. Some of the best shots are around sunrise and sunset -- there isn't a lot of light. If you notice your camera shake when you hit the shutter button, set a 2 second delay. Tap the shutter then move your hand away from the camera. The 2 second delay lets it stabilize before the picture is taken.

Since you want to take a picture of a CAR and not a landscape, find an area with nothing but sky in the backdrop, like a field or a massive parking lot with no lamp posts.

If you can't find an area with nothing in the background, then find an area that will give some backgrounds which complements the car. This will require you to have a better eye for composition.

If you have a background, don't keep shooting on the same spot. Change the composition. Move the car around, shoot from the other side, etc. If keep shooting on the same background, all your pictures are going to look very similar since the background is a major part of the composition.

You can also use a zoom lens and take advantage of the telephoto effect and narrow depth of field to turn a busy background into beautiful bokeh.

Here's an example:
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This is a similar shot with a wide depth of field. The background can be distracting.
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Start early. The best hours are around sunrise and sunset. Start an hour early so you can get warmed up taking photos and figure out where to position the car, and what angles it looks good at. As the lighting improves, you'll be ready for it and your pictures will improve.

Some cars were originally designed as a sketch from one angle. Find that angle and make sure to get a good shot of it. If you're taking advantage of natural lighting, shoot each angle at various times during the shoot, so that you can pick the best lighting for each one.

You don't always have to include the whole car in the shot.
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Other people mentioned headlights... You DON'T have to turn the headlights off to get a good picture, but you do need crystal clear lenses and, preferably, projector headlamps. Otherwise you'll get a lot of scatter from the lights, and lens flares all over the place.

Stay out of the range of the lights where they cause lens flare or starbursts (or open your aperture more so they aren't so bursty). Remove any filters to reduce the glare and lens flare if you're shooting the lights.

The headlights are in these pictures, and I didn't use exposure bracketing to make any sort of composite.
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Sometimes you can use natural lens flare to get an interesting, cinematic look:
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A note about polarizing filters... because of the shape of the car, one filter angle is going to eliminate reflections on the side of the car, and another filter angle is going to eliminate reflections on the top of the car (and the windshield). There is no setting that will eliminate both. One way to use a polarizer when shooting a car is to take at least two shots without moving the camera (obviously you need a tripod for this), with different polarizer angles, then make a composite of the images in Photoshop or GIMP, so that you can eliminate the reflections on all the windows and/or the hood and side of the car.

Just a note about the above photos, assuming you think they look good at all:
-The car has been sitting outside for days and was covered in dust.
-I didn't use a flash at all.

You can get good photos even if you break the rules. Would the car look better clean? Maybe. Would it look better if I used a flash? Not with a built-in flash under those lighting conditions! Big external flash? Reflectors in the right spots? Yes, that might be useful.
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