Car Photography

DorsetDude said:
80% of statistics are made up on the spot
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Most professional high end car photography like you see in the ads in magazines is done with very big light sources, to get soft light on an object it needs to be bigger than the thing you are lighting. If you use small lights on a car you end up with tons of specular highlights. The alternative is use natural overcast daylight and position the car in the right spot or subtract some light using flags.then there's motor sport images which I guess is like any other sport photography, but I don't have any experience with so could be wrong. But images like the one you posted are done with a rig on a moving car.
 
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Blimey yes. In the Haymarket studio there's lots of 2Kw lights, more 1Kw and some smaller 500w lights. It get's quite warm in there.
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Shooting the other weekend we used 4 huge metz flashguns with battery packs on skyports outdoors
 
POAH said:
just because google turns up lots of images does mean they are any good ;)
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I never said anything about good car photography ;)

My personal, and not necessarily factual, opinion is this..

Wide angle gives scope to easily create a dominant and imposing view of the car, and sometimes it's surroundings, whilst also getting in close to the detail. It's fairly simple to see why it's used.

Going in wielding a longer lens can result in some stunning shots, but more imagination and creativity is required to get that shot. It's pretty easy to make a car, and/or it's surroundings, very bland.

At the end of the day, there's no rules in photography, and it's generally those that break the rules take the best, or perhaps more to the point, most interesting shots.
 
Mank said:
I'm off to FiTP this weekend which is a static show, I'll be armed with my 10-24 and 35 prime :D

It's good to have a wide lens at a show, as people tend to get in the way especially if its a busy one!
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Me too rob I am there setting up tomorrow and will be on the gate from 5:30am to about 8:30am.
 
Zetec said:
Me too rob I am there setting up tomorrow and will be on the gate from 5:30am to about 8:30am.
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You apart of the organisers?

I'm there tomorrow to get drunk in the pub :lol: I'm on the ZSOC stand, so please don't hate me if you are apart of the organisers! :lol:
 
Edwardioo said:
many thanks for your replys :D
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Lol. As with everything creative, it's a subjective art and there no definitive answer.. We can explain how to do a particular shot but at the end of the day it's down to your interpretation and practice :)
 
I've attached a few images from yesterday's show. All I've done is resize the images for the web so they are as taken. Like I said, the lenses used are 17-55 Nikkor and a 70-300mm Tamron. I've made sure to add a 17mm, 55mm, 70mm and 300mm shot so you can see what difference each focal length makes. I'm shooting with a Nikon D90 so the focal length has a 1.5x crop factor.


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17mm

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55mm

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70mm

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300mm

Regards
Mark
 
Mank said:
You apart of the organisers?

I'm there tomorrow to get drunk in the pub :lol: I'm on the ZSOC stand, so please don't hate me if you are apart of the organisers! :lol:
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I was Rob I wont hate you for that ZSOC had some nice cars on their stand well done for that. I am the Southern area offical but not for much longer as I have had enough of the club.
 
Zetec said:
I was Rob I wont hate you for that ZSOC had some nice cars on their stand well done for that. I am the Southern area offical but not for much longer as I have had enough of the club.
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Unfortunately a few people let the club down and it gives us a bad name :(

Yea, tends to be a big stand. I didn't bother putting the effort in this year, was concentrating more trying to sell my engine :lol:
 
bbb said:
Thanks dude, appreciate it :D

For what it's worth I really don't like barrel distortion so never go wider than 24mm on full frame. If I can get back enough to use 100mm for static car shots I'm happy :)
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No problem - thanks for the inspiration
 
AboveFunction said:
You can also be in a car and matching the same speed but you could achieve a similar effect by panning at continuous mode to get the right shot.
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This is quite hard I found.....recently organised a meet on here and we tried some car to car shots, but via the boot and shooting a following car, is pretty hard as both cars are moving indepentantly.

I got one or two very average shot's and carpet burns on my knees. Might be better if you have an S class or something else equally soft riding as the lead car though.
 
This thread has inspired me to get our classic car off the driveway, give it a wash and give the industrial estate a whirl with my camera :) I can think of one shot where a wide-angled lens could work but that means I'll have to nick the spouses Nikon - I don't have a wide angled lens
 
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