Tips on taking photos of a car

toe_knee

Right a friend of mine bought a lovely car recently and has asked me to take some pics of it. I told him I would drop around at the weekend and take a few snaps for him. Is there any tips anyone has for taking a good pic of a car and maybe some good ideas for post pic work in photoshop.

I have a Canon 450D with standard lens and Adobe PS CS4 and Lightroom

Paulw

Where you photograph the car will be important, especially the background and area.

Find a good location. That's your first task.

.Longshanks.

& second, get a polarizing filter to remove glare / reflections.

After that its down to personal preference. I like using a wide angle lens and getting nice and low. But flicking through any decent car magazine / website will give you 100's of ideas

toe_knee

I have a polarizing lens so thats one thing off the list. Good location......will have to tink about that one

.Longshanks.

Simple suggestion;

Clean car, grubby car park for free lights, camera on tripod at f8 or so and a 4-5 second exposure to pick up available lights and make car pop. It will also give nice reflections like below (ignore what I said above about CP filter!)

hbr

toe_knee wrote: »

Right a friend of mine bought a lovely car recently and has asked me to take some pics of it.

Lovely probably means nice and shiny. The lovelier it is, the more tricky it will be. Be careful not to overexpose in direct sunlight. Save the images as raw rather than JPEG. This will give you a greater chance of correcting any exposure errors. Take a good few shots and if in doubt, use exposure bracketing.

Bring a tripod for low light conditions or if you want a wide DOF. Most importantly, bring a few scantily clad models to sit on the bonnet.

Borderfox

hbr wrote: »

. Most importantly, bring a few scantily clad models to sit on the bonnet.

Works for me

toe_knee

Lads, thanks for the advice. I now have a location in my head very similar to the car park in the post above by Longshanks. Now to work on the girls

ThOnda

Forget such girls, unless you are about to shoot a pimp-mobile