Amateur car pics

[Lycanthrope]

So I got bored this afternoon and decided to take some photos of my car. I don't know anything about photography, so the pics were taken with a Fuji Finepix S5500 on Auto (one day I'll read the manual for it). Not surprisingly, most of them turned out pretty bad, but after a bit of messing in Photoshop, here are a few results:



Thoughts/comments/critique welcome.

[Haim]

thats not bad at all....

[americ_ian]

that 2nd pic needs a homeless guy sitting in that chair

[Chaos]

not bad but alter the angle of your front wheels i rekcon

[Horny_Devil]

Originally Posted by Chaos

not bad but alter the angle of your front wheels i rekcon

yea like damian said always have the flat of your wheel facing the camera, as we dont want to see your tires.

in those photos ud want to have your wheels pointing in the other dirrection ever so slightly

like this: My Pictures :: Random Shoot 28-Dec-06 :: IMG_1640

other than that theyre great pictures

what camera are u using?

[SLOTEG]

Originally Posted by Lycanthrope

so the pics were taken with a Fuji Finepix S5500 on Auto

Originally Posted by Horny_Devil

what camera are u using?

its not often you catch the master!
i like those shots, nice, crisp, car looks nice (apart from the turned wheels) and the backgrounds are great too!
dont know why everyone likes darkening up the border areas tho, i suppose it does draw your eye to the centre of the image and the subject gets framed nicely, but its getting a little repeditive
good work tho mate

[Will]

not bad ,will be better with a good crop tho.

[Lycanthrope]

Cheers for the comments. To be honest I didn't even think about the angle of the wheels, I just parked up and snapped away. And believe it or not, those images are already cropped some. I didn't want to lose too much of the background, having the car stretch border to border looks a little strange, and I didn't feel game enough to experiment with having the car off-center, or the like.

[Dcteg]

Great pics (wish i could take halfway decent ones!) but i keep waiting for one of the Thunderbird plane thingees to come out of the door with number two beside it in the second pic?

-Do love the backround though very urban!

[Kelsonmassif]

the angles are pretty retarded, what happened to the basic 3/4 angle shots? the background is decent, but yea could frame the shot more on the car, no one wants to see parking lines heh, and the angle of the wheels should be as HD said

photoshop dont really bring out a bad shot to start off with ay

just keep those things in mind for the next shoot

[ITR_cam]

yea your half way there just get closer to the car and the wheel needs to be turned other way, nice photoshop tho!

[Lycanthrope]

Originally Posted by Kelsonmassif

the angles are pretty retarded, what happened to the basic 3/4 angle shots? the background is decent, but yea could frame the shot more on the car

Yeah cheers, like I said, I'm no expert - this was just a spur of the moment thing. What do you mean by 3/4 angle? Examples?

Another couple of things I couldn't decide on at the time were distance from the car, and height of the camera - any advice there?

I'll see if I can find the manual for my camera too, something other than "auto" might have a bit more success.. though the camera itself is getting pretty old.

[VTAKYO]

Top choice of settings man, and the atmosphere you have achieved with the editing is pretty sweet! Just keep in mind the car is the focus, not the scene; no matter how pretty the surroundings or background might be. Just elementary rules. Start with the division of thirds sort of thing.

[Kelsonmassif]

Originally Posted by Lycanthrope

Yeah cheers, like I said, I'm no expert - this was just a spur of the moment thing. What do you mean by 3/4 angle? Examples?

Another couple of things I couldn't decide on at the time were distance from the car, and height of the camera - any advice there?

I'll see if I can find the manual for my camera too, something other than "auto" might have a bit more success.. though the camera itself is getting pretty old.

heres a 3/4 from the back angle, the same anlge would apply from the front, mind the ollllld pic, was just getting used to the camera back then,




Distance and angle is totally up to you, it comes on how you think a photo can complement the car, on a ek going too low down to take a photo can make it look kinda weird, so a higher angle on the EK's look good imo. distance can be summed up on whats filling the frame, if you want a bit of background then use it, if not then change your framing etc. end of the day its your vision

[Horny_Devil]

y not take pictures from lots of different heights and angles? that what i always do i end up with 50-100 photos at the end of the shoot and i only end up liking less than 10

and remember just keep practising

[Mech]

Please never use the Photoshop 'clouds' filter...

[Lycanthrope]

Haha, yeah it looks pretty cheesy, but the sky in the original pic was too bright and drew your eye away from the car. I suppose I could've cropped the image more to get rid of it, but decided to go for the surreal look. Something to remember for next time.

[Kelsonmassif]

Originally Posted by Horny_Devil

y not take pictures from lots of different heights and angles? that what i always do i end up with 50-100 photos at the end of the shoot and i only end up liking less than 10

and remember just keep practising

50-100 pics? thats a waste of time and effort, just take your time with framing and get the right shot first time

of course go for different angles, but a good rule for car photography is get all the basic angles done first, then if you have time left play around with other angles, but ive found in most cases time is the decider.

just pick up your average car magazine and see what they work with, of course some magazines just take a certain amount of angles but you will get the idea

[SLOTEG]

that RRTD shot is pretty good, you focus on the car first off and then the lights and angle of teh roof draws your eye in

[Horny_Devil]

Originally Posted by Kelsonmassif

50-100 pics? thats a waste of time and effort, just take your time with framing and get the right shot first time

yep cause i like to play with the exposure and lots of different angles positions etc. and more often than not it will look good on the camera, but when it get home it looks like crap on the moniter, so i like to take a fair few pics, i dont use photoshop u see. ill get round to using it one day

[Kelsonmassif]

i wouldnt rely on photoshop neither (cant make shit photos good), and also dont trust the pos lcd screens, just work with the exposure meter, just measure all the light thats around, take your time and at the end you will save time

[phonix]

Originally Posted by Mech

Please never use the Photoshop 'clouds' filter...

Tell that to Honda-Tech