s4play

I know a lot of you are photo guru's out here and I have thick skin so can you tell me what is good or bad about this photo?

I picked up a new lense and was playing with it. For me it seems I always get better pictures in some shade and using a flash or strobe. I have ZERO luck shooting into the sun as it makes the paint look too bright and un-natural, is this normal?

Do you pro's use shade and then strobes to light the car better?


FYI, I shot these 100% un-touched photos in .jpg using my 40D and a 17-55 lense.

Looking forward to the comments






rick

playground_the

from what i see, every computer screen shows differently, but looks like thats all 'white' sun light. people tend to like 'yellow' and 'orange' sunlight better, it depends on the time of the day, clouds and season. Im not sure about cannon, but nikon you can set the shooting mode to 'vivid' mode. it helps add the yellownes to the picture. sorry i couldnt be any more helpful.

slightly2ned

I dont know anything about photography but 2 things I noticed are the pink dot from the sunlight & usually I try not to take pictures away from the sun where the sun casts a shadow of the car in front of it.

Looks like you changed the color of your NSX wheels in this pic to a dark gunmetal.

rob-2

You shooting auto?

The sun should be behind you when you shoot.

s4play

Good point thanks!


Yup I have a few sets of these rims in different colors


I tried shooting in Manual, P and Av modes but can't get the settings right. The picture you see posted was shot in Auto mode.

S2000boi

Get out of auto mode.


Meter the grey metal part from the headlight housing.
If you don't know what I'm talking about then, def pick up a book that talks about exposure.

NFRad

Next time try the photoshoot where the sun isn't beaming on the car directly, it causes the hotspots(front passenger side bumper area) and the big shadow(drivers side). You don't necessarily need to use strobes when in the shade to get a pretty good photo, IMO. I usually like taking pics of my car around 30-45min before sunset, such as the one in my signature. But yes a strobe to light up the car does help but not a must.
Also, try not to position the car where it'll look like it's got poles coming out of the hard top(handicap signs and US Flag). I also would've stepped back a few feet, maybe 5 feet or so, frame more of the entire front-end.

I would start there and practice practice practice!
You've got an awesome subject to shoot. Kudos on the CR conversion. I myself am thinking of at least adding the front CR lip to my NFR.

Hope this helps and just my opinion, I'm no pro.

--Rad

verik07

I think it's called magic hour when the lighting has so much color differentiation instead of one white light color. I'm not too sure on what else you can do other than try out different methods of shooting. I hope it somewhat helps. Magic hour would be something of this sort,

TougeHorseman

Rick, did you get my email about setting up the photoshoot with Alexey?
He'd be happy to mentor you throughout the process, from camera logistics to computer editing.
The man has no secrets.

nitewing117

I feel like there's a lot of distractions going on, detracting me away from the subject. The handicap sign, flag, and all the other things in the background are where I catch my eyes gravitating toward, which is what I'm assuming wasn't the intent. If you were to take the picture in the same spot, same conditions, and only change 1 thing, adjusting the focus so that the background was less crisp would help bring the car out more.