Taking pictures

[flosho]

Can you elaborate at all based on certain scenarios. Overcast vs. shooting with sun at your back. Obviously you never want to shoot into the sun?

Ideally with the interior, you want know sun I'm assuming or as little as possible? If that's the case, is there any way to avoid washing out the interior color with the flash or ISO settings.

I personally shoot all(well 99%) the cars indoors under flourescent light, which is not ideal, but it is what I am working with currently.

I do have a custom white balance setting that I use. Generally, I shoot at F7.1 and 200ISO (not RAW) and crop down/resize to 800x600 and 640x480 goes on our website.

If you are shooting outdoors, the best time to do it is on an overcast day. Or earlier in the morning or evening. You don't want the sun at 11-3 o'clock in the sky because it will create super harsh shadows, especially in the interior...

If the sun is high in the sky, you definitely want to shoot with the sun behind you or you will lose the details in the shadows...

Here is a picture shooting in the afternoon (probably 1-2pm). You can see the detail loss in the side of the car and the harsh shadow on the ground.


Here is shooting from the other side, haven't moved the car any and this picture turns out significantly better, IMO. You still get the shadow on the ground, but you can clearly see the body lines, etc.


This next shot is an interior shot (only resized) with the 16.5mm-135mm lens I use. It lets you do most of the wide angle shots without significant distortion around the edges. This is also shot on a tripod from the back seat. It was probably a 2 second exposure at ISO400 or 800. No flash.

 

[jsantunes78]

Does anyone have any suggestions on making an inexpensive yet functional booth? I don't really have a ton of room to work with (only one garage bay. I might be able to squeeze a foot or two on either side). Would I need to hang overhead lights too or can I get away with curtians and stand alone lights?

 

[JesseJ]

Wow that was very very helpful flosho. I can see how tripod with no flash would be ideal on interior photos but I feel like that would be cumbersome? My tripod anyway is way too bulky. I don't even use it when I shoot cars. I don't shoot RAW either just because it's too time consuming. I shoot in small JPG form but it isn't in the right ratio so I have to get a little creative with my overlay to get the photos to the right ratio then I scale it down to 640-480.

 

[flosho]

Does anyone have any suggestions on making an inexpensive yet functional booth? I don't really have a ton of room to work with (only one garage bay. I might be able to squeeze a foot or two on either side). Would I need to hang overhead lights too or can I get away with curtians and stand alone lights?

IMHO, that is just too small. I would say I use a pretty 'low budget' photobooth since it consists of a huge tan curtain and grey painted partical board walls... It has worked quite well but we will be upgrading it soon if we don't move to a new location soon. My 'booth' also doubles as our main work shop. However, I have about a 18x40 square foot area that is visible in the photographs.

 

[jsantunes78]

I have taken some shots without any curtians and I can get all of the angles that I need on a car the size of a late 90's early 2000's Buick Century. I was able to use my bay and step about a foot into the bay on either side.

I'd like to get something as far as a new camera and a booth set up early next year. The sooner the better because the snow is coming.

 

[johnnyp]

some photoshop skills would do you extremly good !!!

 

[jsantunes78]

some photoshop skills would do you extremly good !!!

I wish I could, but I do only online sales to places all over the country. With that being said I don't think that I should Dr the pictures in any way because I need to represent these cars acurately.

If I were shooting new cars this would be a lot easier, but I have to deal with dings, dents, and scratches. A mixture of far shots and close ups.

 

[flosho]

I wish I could, but I do only online sales to places all over the country. With that being said I don't think that I should Dr the pictures in any way because I need to represent these cars acurately.

If I were shooting new cars this would be a lot easier, but I have to deal with dings, dents, and scratches. A mixture of far shots and close ups.

I don't think it is misleading to slightly adjust the contrast and/or brightness. You wouldn't ever want to photoshop out dings, scuffs or damage but creating a visually appealing photo and not a dull, low contrast photo is what sells your cars. I know because it's the same story where I work.

 

[Billfred]

I don't think it is misleading to slightly adjust the contrast and/or brightness. You wouldn't ever want to photoshop out dings, scuffs or damage but creating a visually appealing photo and not a dull, low contrast photo is what sells your cars. I know because it's the same story where I work.

This is the stance we follow here. Inventory photos' exposure levels and white balance can and do get corrected, but we wouldn't dare retouch an inventory photo both for integrity and for our sanity.

 

[flosho]

This is the stance we follow here. Inventory photos' exposure levels and white balance can and do get corrected, but we wouldn't dare retouch an inventory photo both for integrity and for our sanity.

I hear you on the sanity part. I could literally spend 30 minutes per photo in PS editing a photo and not compramise the integrity of the photo. Right now I crop down to 800x600 and like I said, just adjust the contrast/brightness.

I've been considering actually using photoshop to do this as the microsoft program I use tends to really kill the quality of the photo when resized...