Tips for taking Car pictures, great for the family photo Album! Options

[coustoe]

First off, Coomer sorry bout that posting in the car pic contest thread, didnt read your whole post.

I wanted to start another thread on tips for taking car pics. Ive had some practice in potrait and landsccape and a little macro photography, but havent really tried taking car pics.

Any people taking their car pics or people with exp with taking good car pictures, please post your advice or discussions about the photography contest here.

Thanks

[Guest_Matthew_*]

ummm

wash and wax it first


get behind the light (dont take a pic of the sun in the car pic too) ...dont let your reflection or shadow show

[coustoe]

im wondering bout image composition, any ideas? Im thinking a night photo with the city skyline would be nice.

or set the camera for a 3 second shutter delay and photograph the car in front of moving traffic at a street or intersection. So you would get that blur effect and the only thing that would be in focus would be the celica.

Leaning towards nighttime in the city, just think the shots will be more dramatic if not more difficult.

Actually I would love to take pictures with 2-3 celicas on the the elevated highway in dc at nightime, Like street racing at night. Just need to get 2-3 celicas together

This post has been edited by coustoe: May 26, 2003 - 7:19 PM

[Drunken_Style]

QUOTE (coustoe @ May 26, 2003 - 4:32 PM)

Actually I would love to take pictures with 2-3 celicas on the the elevated highway in dc at nightime, Like street racing at night. Just need to get 2-3 celicas together

If I go to see my relatives in Arlington VA this July may be I can help you out.

[celi_gt_racer]

check my pics... pretty artistic and overall good for a 16 year old ... I THINK

[coustoe]

st_racer, pretty good composition, the green background is well balanced with the foreground space and red color of the celica. Like the one with the yellow car lined up the best.

This post has been edited by coustoe: May 26, 2003 - 7:48 PM

[coustoe]

drunken and st_racer celis would look good in a photoshoot on city highway at night .

I know some of you hate the fast n furios, but gonna catch it when it comes out so i can get some ideas. for good shot angles, settings and composition.

[Cragspider]

One good place to take some really cool pics is up on the top of a parking garage. We did it for the first pigeon forge meet, and were going to do it again. Also it will look cool if you can get some of the city in the back. But I will say that the night shots will look tight. I may make it out to the DC area either this summer or in the fall so if you want we could hook up and get some cool pics with our cars.
Bryan

[Coomer]

It's alright coustoe. I think I've probably deleted at least 25 posts from that thread because people don't read.

Anyway, I've taken 2,136 photos of my Celica and they're all taking up about 430 mb on my hard drive. A few of the best ones are in my profile. As far as suggestions for taking photos, I suggest taking night and sunset and low-light without a flash. Though flash makes it easier to take sharper pictures in low-light, it often makes the lighting look very bad. See my example below. The left photos were taken by me with the flash on, and the right were taken with it off.



Also, when taking pictures, I try to make sure that there are no other cars in the photo, unless they're my friends' nice cars and we intend to have the cars in the pics for added effect. I try to take pics without houses and busy backgrounds as well, because it draws more attention from the car. Sometimes, however, a photo of your car with a city skyline or an industrial plant in the background looks incredible. You just need to experiment and take lots and lots of pics. I usually take 50-100 pics whenever I go on a photo shoot drive, because I can fit 200 or so 1280x960 pics on my camera and then I can delete whatever photos I don't want.

[bonzaisushi]

drunken style i love the pics u took man i love the one with u ontop of the garage

[Drunken_Style]

QUOTE (bonzaisushi @ May 26, 2003 - 7:23 PM)

drunken style i love the pics u took man i love the one with u ontop of the garage

Thanks, I took at the building that I work in.

[KAMiX]

I think the most important thing is a good digital camera! - Coom I'm guessing you have a sony? (pictures look very much like mine)

I bought a sony DSC-p71 which was one of the newer sony cameras about a year ago. From looking at peoples pictures on the net, I really haven't seen many other brand names that compare. I'm up to about picture number 3000, and almost every picture I have taken has looked clear and crisp, as if I'm a pro photographer or something - If you look at any of my pictures through these forums, you'll see what I'm talking about! (or just look at coomers pics )

I have spent a lot of time messing around with my camera - there are about 5 different flash settings, video, and 2 different photo types - scenic or landscape, and point and shoot.

ANYWAYS.. I'm not going to write an essay, so..

the best way to learn to take a digi photo is to buy a big memory stick and go fill it with pictures a couple of hundred times! I still couldn't talk the talk with any proper photographers, but I have taken some pictures that I am immensly proud of, with not much skill


one tip - play with your cameras focus, white balance and exposure settings if you have them. Try to get the exposure of your camera about the same as the object you are shooting, and when you use white balance together with this you can get some nice colours happening (like my forest pic in the artistic thread)

[94TRDCeli]

that supra is bad azz along with the celi

[Coomer]

QUOTE (94TRDCeli @ May 26, 2003 - 8:59 PM)

that supra is bad azz along with the celi

I thought the Supra was sweet too. It was 11:30 or so on a school night and I was coming back from one of my hockey games with a couple friends, and I saw it in a parking lot and was like "Oh my god we gotta stop!" So I turned around and I was just staring at this car for a couple minutes and then I took a couple pictures, and the owner remote started it probably because he thought we were messing with it or something, so we left. My friends thought I was crazy for stopping to look at a car though.

KamixZR, I actually have a Canon Powershot A10 camera. It's only 1.3 megapixels and I have to hold the camera very still in low light to get crisp shots, but I still like the camera a lot. It's been through a whole lot(dropped a couple times by me and a bunch more times by my drunk friends) and still works, so it's pretty durable too. I wish I could control the aperature and stuff like that, but oh well.

[No0bOne]

Interesting...

[KAMiX]

My bad Coomer, still, you are getting just as good photos out of that camera as I am from mine (probably better seeing as I have so many extra options!)

Hard to get my sig and avatar up to your great quality man!

[HyperDeathKill]

Nothing, absolutely nothing, beats a decent 35 MM camera. But yea, I've taken a few photography classes, and an easy technique I can explain is using different camera angles. Most pictures are taken from 5-6 feet off the ground... get low, or get high. It can change everything.

[bonzaisushi]

i have the sony dsc-s75 great camera, i just need to tweak it to take better pics, soon im gunna get the new sony with the 5.0 megapixels. its a killer camera. SONY OWNS JOO!!!!

[Milds3vn]

Wow Drunken, that top picture is great. I think the best tips are, make sure there is good lighting that brings out the lines on the car and pick a unique backdrop. Industrial backdrops are cool and anything that you don't see everyday or has alot of texture. Black and white photography is great also, it really makes pictures special in a way color can't.

[94TRDCeli]

actually sony will never own canon or olympus digital cams because thats basically all they make most people will reccomend those two brands over sony any day of the week.....and no im not trying to knock sony but i think they have been slipping the last few years with the quality of their products...btw i love that sony cam that records on the mini cd's..plus i like canon cause i bought my mom 4.0 megapixel canon and i think its sweet