Critiques requested for car sale images

Your results are nearly identical to simulated results on the DOF simulator.

https://dofsimulator.net/en/

You could achieve a further blurring by moving closer to the chair and using a wider angle.

The sharpness of the chair seems okay to me.

Though the entire image looks photoshopped. How is it possible to have zero shadow under the chair??

Bob said:

Your results are nearly identical to simulated results on the DOF simulator.

https://dofsimulator.net/en/

You could achieve a further blurring by moving closer to the chair and using a wider angle.

The sharpness of the chair seems okay to me.

Though the entire image looks photoshopped. How is it possible to have zero shadow under the chair??

Click to expand...

Wow! That DOF simulator is cool! I've fiddled with it some; need to do more. Thanks!

I'm trying to avoid an angle wider than 50 mm since that seems to start distorting the car I need to photograph. Also, as I go wider the lens captures more to the sides of course, and the background to the left and right of the sample image isn't great. This location happens to be one small area where the background is decent I think and fits the car's entire side at 50 mm. I think I can zoom to about 40 mm and still keep out the undesirable background to the left and right, not much more though, when snapping the side of the car.

Re the chair sharpness: Thank you. I'm apparently too new to know what to expect.

As for no shadow under the chair, I dunno: The sun was setting to the right of the image, and was just below the tree tops of the woods in that direction.

Try night and lights. Avoids putting miles on the odo. You can control what is seen.

bjn70 said:

I'll suggest an experiment- try raising the shadows various amounts and see if there is any improvement. The lower side of the car looks a bit dark to me, but then I do a small amount of raising of shadows on almost all of my photos.

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Hi - I tried your suggestion: Would you please let me know what you think?


Reminder of my original caption: "For this edit, I actually started with the JPEG out of my 70D rather than the RAW, cropped, reduced size, sharpened, spot-healed, slight contrast/brightness."



[ATTACH alt="Same image as above but with shadows lightened using PhotoScape X's "Brighten" tool to a value of +70 (not sure if that means percentage; the range is 0 to 100), and with a Mask."]3111960[/ATTACH]
Same image as above but with shadows lightened using PhotoScape X's "Brighten" tool to a value of +70 (not sure if that means percentage; the range is 0 to 100), and with a Mask.



Thank you!

I usually don't go real far with the lightening.

In your comparison I see that it lightened up the rocker panels and the wheels. The wheels look good that way, the rocker panels I'm not sure about, maybe too far. The lightening should be done to your taste.

I prefer the first one of the two. There's something about the light in the second picture that makes it feel more like a toy car that has been posed.

I agree with some other posts that I feel you have gotten all you can get out of the car itself, the limit here is more the background. But it's not a big detraction, it's still a perfectly good photo that shows off the car well.

All - Re the background, the Bring a Trailer vehicle auction site published a Photography Guide which includes "4. Pick a simple location - Find a quiet, uncluttered location. Use a side street, park or an empty parking lot. Eliminate visual distractions. Keep the background uniform—a wall, trees, a fence, or open space. You’re selling the car, not the background."

I feel like this latest set of pics meets that guidance ... unless the trees are not simple ... but I still feel like the images could be better since they seem to have an overall dark-ish feel to them. What do you think? Do I need to look for a better background? Any other comments on these?

(BTW this was a day of almost entirely overcast skies, until right near the end when the sun started coming out, as can be seen by the trees being darker in the 1st image compared to the other two - all 3 images 1/200 sec)

I think the car again looks great, but as you say, the background is very busy. The quote says to find an uncluttered location without visual distractions, and those trees are plenty.

If you use Google Image Search to search for 'sports car' and check out the images, you'll see a lot of examples. I feel like the best ones have the sky visible in the picture, touching or behind the car. Maybe you can find a gently crested hill to put the car on top of.

OK, I spent time this weekend trying to scout out better locations and found what seems best is a local 7-story parking garage. Here's a sample of my truck taken with my Pixel 6a:



Or I can raise the camera and get some trees in the image to make it less sterile - What say you?





... and I found I can rent a U-haul not-enclosed car hauler for $55/day, and with the location being only 3 miles away that's fine.

I'm looking forward to the shoot!

extrapolator said:

OK, I spent time this weekend trying to scout out better locations and found what seems best is a local 7-story parking garage. Here's a sample of my truck taken with my Pixel 6a:



Or I can raise the camera and get some trees in the image to make it less sterile - What say you?

Click to expand...

You are still photographing your cars “against a background” rather than as part of a scene.

Traditionally, an expensive red sports car is known as a “chick magnet”, so maybe you could drape your GT with such an accessory, and in an appropriate setting, of course. :-D

LynniePad said:

You are still photographing your cars “against a background” rather than as part of a scene.

Traditionally, an expensive red sports car is known as a “chick magnet”, so maybe you could drape your GT with such an accessory, and in an appropriate setting, of course. :-D

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Hmm ... sounds like you're suggesting I include a female (model) in the images. If I did that, I'm pretty sure I'd be the first to do so in a Bring a Trailer vehicle auction listing ... maybe that'd be a good thing! ... to set it apart. Hmmmm ...

However, your "as part of a scene" advice seems to go against Bring a Trailer's suggestion "4. Pick a simple location - Find a quiet, uncluttered location. Use a side street, park or an empty parking lot. Eliminate visual distractions. Keep the background uniform—a wall, trees, a fence, or open space. You’re selling the car, not the background."

But I will say, after looking at them more, to me my truck images above look kinda plain and sterile to me, lacking in interest. Even the red car images are more interesting due to the woods background.

Drat! I thought I was making progress ... now it feels like back to the drawing board!

I debated posting.

The risk is...

Oh forget it.

extrapolator said:

Bill Ferris said:

Beautiful car!

My observations and comments are mostly in the area of creative options to consider. They're based on the guiding principal that anything in a photo that doesn't contribute to the story of the image or subject, is a distraction to be eliminated.

First, I wouldn't photograph the car in front of your house. It's not a setting that focuses the viewer's attention on the car and it's most attractive attributes. You want the viewer's gaze immediately drawn to the car. The setting should contribute to the vehicle's story or, at worst, be brutal.

Is there a track or road course in the area where you could make the photos? A dark asphalt road surface will set off the car better than a light gray concrete surface. Positioning the car on a bank, in a turn - especially an undulating curve on a road course - would add a dynamic setting that contributes to communicating the personality of the vehicle.

I'd also wait for a cloudy day when the sky will act like a giant soft box. Soft even lighting will lighten shadows, even out the illumination, and avoid overblown highlights. It's a quality of light that will showcase the beauty and elegance of the vehicle.

By choosing a better location and better quality light, you can call attention to two of the most important qualities that will attract buyers... its power & speed and the car's beauty.

Good luck with the sale.

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Got it, thanks. Apparently I'll need to come up with a different location. My problem is, the car for sale has 351 miles on it, and adding miles to a collector car usually devalues it. So I'll probably need to trailer the car to a better location, problem with that being that I don't have a trailer. I'll look into renting one.

Click to expand...

An alternative is to adjust your depth of field to blur the background, thus making it less attention grabbing. I see you're already at f/2.8, so unless you have a faster lens, that might be difficult.

--
Is it always wrong
for one to have the hots for
Comrade Kim Yo Jong?

bobn2 said:

extrapolator said:

Bill Ferris said:

Beautiful car!

My observations and comments are mostly in the area of creative options to consider. They're based on the guiding principal that anything in a photo that doesn't contribute to the story of the image or subject, is a distraction to be eliminated.

First, I wouldn't photograph the car in front of your house. It's not a setting that focuses the viewer's attention on the car and it's most attractive attributes. You want the viewer's gaze immediately drawn to the car. The setting should contribute to the vehicle's story or, at worst, be brutal.

Is there a track or road course in the area where you could make the photos? A dark asphalt road surface will set off the car better than a light gray concrete surface. Positioning the car on a bank, in a turn - especially an undulating curve on a road course - would add a dynamic setting that contributes to communicating the personality of the vehicle.

I'd also wait for a cloudy day when the sky will act like a giant soft box. Soft even lighting will lighten shadows, even out the illumination, and avoid overblown highlights. It's a quality of light that will showcase the beauty and elegance of the vehicle.

By choosing a better location and better quality light, you can call attention to two of the most important qualities that will attract buyers... its power & speed and the car's beauty.

Good luck with the sale.

Click to expand...

Got it, thanks. Apparently I'll need to come up with a different location. My problem is, the car for sale has 351 miles on it, and adding miles to a collector car usually devalues it. So I'll probably need to trailer the car to a better location, problem with that being that I don't have a trailer. I'll look into renting one.

Click to expand...

An alternative is to adjust your depth of field to blur the background, thus making it less attention grabbing. I see you're already at f/2.8, so unless you have a faster lens, that might be difficult.

Click to expand...

I do also have a Canon 50mm f/1.8 ... I'll try it. I love having the flexibility to zoom, but can do without it for many of the images I need. Thanks.

Hi again everyone - Since I always like to get the conclusion to a story when possible, and since DPR has apparently been revived, I thought I'd return to say that thanks to the advice I received here regarding my car sale images, the subject car sold on May 12th, and if you care to see the 309 final product images I used in the auction listing they are here: https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2005-ford-gt-66/

As you can see, I didn't end up coming up a better location than what I showed in trial images here before, which is right outside my garage where the car was housed, with its unfortunately busy vegetative background close to the car. I was def not very satisfied with this location, but all the other options I came up with had downsides that weren't worth doing. But I did find a way to kinda lessen the busy background by blowing it out. Me being a photog noob it made the most sense for me to be able to roll the car right outside its home, snap images, roll it back inside, go download and review the results, then rinse and repeat until I had a complete final set ... this rather than transporting the car somewhere and feeling under the gun to get all the images I needed in a limited amount of time, and other risks involved with such a clean, flaw-free, valuable vehicle; didn't even want to get caught in rain (remember I'm in FL!). I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Feel free to hack me up; I can take it! I'd rather have all the knowledge and opinions than have my feelings spared ... Thank you!

I think it turned out fine. The contrast against the vegetation and difference in color/saturation makes it stand out and be visible - not in the blue sky background style, but in a "machine vs nature" type style.