R1600Turbo's Gallery *Big Update Post #25*

[CodeRedR51]

Thought I would try my hand at this "gallery" thing. What you see below is the best I can do with a point and shoot camera, and some minor editing with Photoshop. Unfortunately my budget doesn't allow me to get a better camera, so I have to make due with what I have. I will post updates to this thread weekly and comments/suggestions are very welcome.

My weapon of choice is a Nikon Coolpix L100 with a 15x optical zoom and a wide angle lens. Retail on these is somewhere around $200. Depending on where I am shooting, I try to use a tripod as much as possible. Editing usually includes not much more than a contrast correction, saturation correction and cropping of the photo. I do resize them for online use, but do keep the originals if anyone is interested in a certain photo.

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This is a photoshoot that I completed this afternoon. Comments are welcome.

Ross Davis Shoot 01/30/2010 <--- For more photos click here.

Examples:

 

[nevertell]

If only they were sold in Europe as well

 

[CodeRedR51]

Not quite sure I understand. Miata's are sold in Europe...

 

[homeforsummer]

Not quite sure I understand. Miata's are sold in Europe...

...and they can be turbocharged on the aftermarket over here too.

Regardless, nice photos 👍 The car looks like a serious bit of kit. I reckon if you were going for a more artistic angle you could up the contrast and saturation a little, bring them to life a bit more... the boost gague pic would look great in black and white, and for the last pic of the rear of the car I would have positioned the car so a little more light hit the back end and showed off the curves.

Look forward to seeing more though, MX5s always go down well with me...

 

[happycorey]

Niiiiice. You should get your hands on some 15x9 6ULs

 

[CodeRedR51]

Niiiiice. You should get your hands on some 15x9 6ULs

There's some nickel ones with Hankook RS2's sitting in the shop. Will probably end up on a shop car. This is a customer's car, and that wheel/tire combo is what he chose. The company that makes these wheels is coming out with a new 15x9 wheel that is similar in weight to the 6UL, (2lbs heavier) but at $84 cheaper in cost should sell quite a few.

 

[Syntax error]

Nice start & welcome to the gallery sub-forum. You will be amazed what you can do with a point and shoot camera. Yeah SLR's have more functionality and options but don't write off P&S cameras. Anyway, not bad for a first off really. The car is pretty cool I must say. One piece of advice I will give, be mindful of the background when you shoot cars. The image I quoted below has a house coming out of it. This can be resolved with a slight play of the angle that you shoot the car at or by moving the vehicle just a tad even.

 

[happycorey]

There's some nickel ones with Hankook RS2's sitting in the shop. Will probably end up on a shop car. This is a customer's car, and that wheel/tire combo is what he chose. The company that makes these wheels is coming out with a new 15x9 wheel that is similar in weight to the 6UL, (2lbs heavier) but at $84 cheaper in cost should sell quite a few.

Ahh I see. I know tirerack makes those wheels don't they? They have a more aggressive set of 15x8 +20 on those I believe too.

 

[Neal]

Just spotted this (http://www.trustedreviews.com/digit...Editing-Tutorial---Adjusting-Colour-Curves/p1)

I use Adobe Lightroom but the tutorial is based on an open source programme. There's some really good image editing tutorials on the trusted reviews website, I should probably pay them more attention! By the way I only use a point and shoot (Canon A710is) but get some pretty results with it.

 

[CodeRedR51]

One piece of advice I will give, be mindful of the background when you shoot cars. The image I quoted below has a house coming out of it. This can be resolved with a slight play of the angle that you shoot the car at or by moving the vehicle just a tad even.

I was thinking about that when I took the photo. Same with the first picture, I don't like the position of the tree behind the car. I was mainly trying to utilize the slope of the road the car was sitting on. If I positioned it any differently the light wouldn't have been very good. I'm going to try and stay away from houses from now on though.

 

[NLxAROSA]

I'm going to try and stay away from houses from now on though.

Not necessarily, the reflection in the Miata/MX-5 logo is really cool, that's something you could do something with.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Update 02/18/2010
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Just a few examples of photos I snapped last summer, and one that I took the other day from the parking lot at my work.

 

[LongbowX]

Very beautiful scenery, I think the second in your strongest shot. I also like how it looks faded somewhat. You don't really need to punch it up in terms of colour.

The first is well done as well, though I wish it were just a little bit, just so we get all of the...tree...thing and not just...almost all of it. However, it is still well put together.

The last flower shot I think could have been improved if you had taken it with the flower more on the left. Nice and clear, though - it is lit very well. Good eye.

 

[Watchman]

Very nice new update, I have to say. 👍

 

[CodeRedR51]

Thanks guys. Hoping to do lots of traveling this summer so this gallery will get a bit larger when it starts getting warm out. Most of those pictures above were a few I picked out of my stash from last summer.

 

[Dahlsim]

Great photos and scenery, thanks 👍

Oh, and your car must be very fun to drive ^^

 

[CodeRedR51]

Snapped this one tonight after I left work. If you grew up around here, you would know what the "Q", the "Goose" and the "Elephant" are.

 

[Syntax error]

That last shot is nice. I would probably want to give the sky a slightly darker blue tone to make it really pop and I'd crop some of the dark front bottom part of the shot but overall a very nice pano 👍

 

[CodeRedR51]

Yeah, I need a better camera.

 

[NLxAROSA]

Nah, the shot is good, just do a bit of post-processing like Syntax suggested, it will be great. 👍

 

[CodeRedR51]

Update 04/04/2010 - Personal car photo shoot.

Additional photos click HERE.

Examples:

 

[Syntax error]

These are quite good. With a bit of tweaking, (dodge & burning) these images can really pop. Your composition is good on all the shots, although the first one feels a little strange. Oh and be mindful of poles growing out of the top of cars. Overall though, Very nice, my favorites are shot 2 & 3.

 

[Cano]

from a guy that more or less does this for a living:

1 - your composition is quite nice, the off-focus... thing on the left distracts, tough. You could have avoided the reflection in the rear pillar by moving a bit.

2 - Show your wheels, turn on your lights, and get the car far from the edge of the parking lot so you eliminate ALLLLL THE DISTRACTIONSSSS in this shot. composition was nice but the background is way, way, WAY too busy.

3 - angle on the car is nice. again, show your wheels. And if you wanted something poking from the car's top, you could have the... freaking word, ah, yes, crane, and not the pole.

4 - if you're gonna show off your wheels, SHOW OFF YOUR WHEELS. half the picture is white space, the other half is half the view of your wheels. get closer to the wheels and turn them all the way out so we will se ALL THE WHEEL. light is very nice on this.

5 - I think this is your strongest all around photo, just watch out for poles growing from your rear hatch and you're set.

And yes, pretty much what Sytax said, a little burning/dodging would do wonders to some of these.

Overall, pretty nice. And nice car.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Thanks guys. I'm not sure how to do the dodging/burning quite yet. I usually just touch up the contrast, color and saturation before cropping it and hitting the save button. I will admit that I don't usually keep the "poles growing out of the car" thing in mind when I am shooting. I guess in this location it would be hard since there were so many of them. Not many good spots around here to do shoots. This location just happened to be built recently.

As far as the distractions in picture two, I think it would be less distracting if all the trees were grown out and filled up the background a bit more. Spring is still in the early stages over here. Hell we got snow at the end of last week.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Update 04/25/2010 - Moab Car Show weekend.

I took a couple days off from work and headed out to Moab Utah for their annual April Action car show. I wanted to get there early to get a good camp site, and also utilize the free entry to some of our national parks. This included Canyonlands National Park as well as Arches National Park. Below are some examples from my time spent at these two parks, as well as the car show and a few others I snapped in my travels. I will get the rest of the photos uploaded to my photobucket when I have time to go through all 300+ photos. Most of them don't really have a sky in them, since my camera doesn't do well with the sky unless you are aiming right at it. That defect aside, comments welcome.

Full gallery will be available soon.

Examples:

Canyonlands National Park

Arches National Park

April Action Car Show

Other photos

 

[Syntax error]

I like the third shot. Very well balanced light with enough definition in the clouds. The Jeep shot is pretty cool too.However the blown out sky is a little distracting.

 

[CodeRedR51]

However the blown out sky is a little distracting.

You're talking about the super white-out sky? Yeah, one of the negatives of my camera.

 

[boiltheocean]

Really like the second image, however (and I'm being picky here), I would find it so much better if the rocks on the far-right were not present. You could always crop them out but that would change the composition which is already very good.

 

[NLxAROSA]

The landscapes are excellent. 👍 They could use a bit of sharpening in PS though.

The composition on the Jeep shot is very good. However, shooting a dark vehicle against a very bright background is difficult, given the limited dynamic range of most cameras. I tried this a couple of times with my black 350Z. You usually get either of three things:

- Car exposed properly, sky overexposed (washed out);
- Sky exposed properly, car underexposed (all black);
- Average exposure for the whole shot.

That last one may work, if you shoot in HDR. HDR gives you more room for post-processing, because of the higher dynamic range (for Canon, this is 14 bits vs the 8 bits of JPEG).

I solved it by taking three exposures (using a tripod) and blending them in post-processing.