New photographer, car shoot. G35 - C&C/Advice wanted!

Hey guys. First thread here, but i'm very active on other forums so familiar with the online community.

Anyway, a buddy of mine convinced me to grab a camera after he bought one himself. Shouldn't have done it, because now i'm addicted. Literally started about a week ago.
Anyway. picked up a Canon T1i with the 18-55 lens. Also got a Tamron 28-200 lens.

These pics were taken a couple days ago. Any ideas/comments/critici​sm/advice are welcome. Thanks.

Cracking car! (id put a smiley but my keyboard is on the blink...

anyway, nice shots, but they're a bit-same-same, some different angles or specifics of the car would have been nice.

The only other crit I can see, is they all seem a bit soft. Might mean that my monitor needs a clean!

thanks! and yeah its most of the same stuff. I was going to take more, but I got kicked off the property (school public parking, and I attend there. go figure)

as for soft, do you mean I should sharpen the image?

other comments i've gotten from friends is I should try doing some of those focus shots (not sure what the style is called). Where it focuses on an area and blurs the rest. None of my pictures have that lol.

Focus is soft. Move the focus point manually and don't let the camera decide for you where to focus. Why are you tilting the camera so much? Does angles ruined the shots IMO. 2 and 3 need some contrast.

Do you use photoshop? If so, use a high pass filter to sharpen the images and improve the focus issue. If you want to blur the background, you need to upgrade your kit lens and get something like the 50mm 1.8 or 85mm 1.8. Since your lens maximum aperture is 3.5 or so, you won't be able to achieve the blurred background SOOC.

Keep Shooting though!

Sick car, bad angles, and soft focus.

The last picture is the best of the bunch, the fog and general ovecastness killed all the nasty reflections. Try shooting 30mins before and after sunset and see what happens.

erikfig wrote in post #15079381
Focus is soft. Move the focus point manually and don't let the camera decide for you where to focus. Why are you tilting the camera so much? Does angles ruined the shots IMO. 2 and 3 need some contrast.

Do you use photoshop? If so, use a high pass filter to sharpen the images and improve the focus issue. If you want to blur the background, you need to upgrade your kit lens and get something like the 50mm 1.8 or 85mm 1.8. Since your lens maximum aperture is 3.5 or so, you won't be able to achieve the blurred background SOOC.

Keep Shooting though!

Yup using photoshop. I'll play with that high pass filter. I'm still trying to get the basics of shooting down. Trying to keep ISO at 100. The only two settings I modify are shutter speed and aperture. And honestly, I still don't know what the heck they really do. They're like brightness levels to me.

As for lens, I don't know what I should be looking for, I'm interested in getting a prime lens (which is the one that doesn't zoom I believe) but can't figure out which to get. I hear 50mm is a good overall?

thanks for the input. when I have time, I'll head out again and take some more.

in the mean time, here's a picture of my lunch!

Mosephus wrote in post #15079603
The last picture is the best of the bunch, the fog and general ovecastness killed all the nasty reflections. Try shooting 30mins before and after sunset and see what happens.

Yeah I myself really like that fog one. I hated it at first because it got so cold and I didn't want to stay out to shoot, but the fog just makes the pictures look really great. I really try to be able to get out at around sunset but unfortunately that's when I'm busy. Maybe this weekend.

You're doing just fine, just keep practicing and read a lot. As for lenses: I only use primes, I hate carrying around big heavy lenses. I use the 50mm 1.8 and the 85mm 1.8 for automotive and they work great, are small, lightweight and easy to carry.

A 24mm or 35mm are also are great for automotive.

Check out my flickr, not the best photos in the world but I shot them with the 85mm 1.8

As for reflections. Is there any specific way to avoid getting them? or significantly reduce them?

Or is the only thing I can really do (besides extensive photoshop work) avoid shooting when the sun is directly out. As well as avoiding other light sources (such as a parking garage)

A polorizer and late light (sunset/twilight). Your letting the angle of your light source create better highlights. The sky on the horizon is lighter than the dark ground creating a nice highlight.

Boring car but a good example.

Alright, took some advice here and tried a shoot later in the day. And ended up with this. I think it got a little too dark, but the sun was still a little bit out and the ocean turned out being completely white (matching the sky) in a lot of my shots. I had to change the shutter and aperture enough so that the ocean was not completely bright and white, but this made the entire picture dark, and the car got really darker because of this. I would have liked to keep the car bright while darkening the background. Only way I found to do this was in photoshop, and even in there, it wasn't what I wanted.

I Like , I never seen a horizon on such a angle as in your first post, dont know if you were going for that, because how you wanted the car postioned but try to level off the horizon...

Sweet Ride !!!

Hahah, yeah I was playing with too much angle in those pictures. I guess it was a "phase" I went through. The hard part with my car is getting the color back if its not in light. The car will appear black.

erikfig wrote in post #15081024
You're doing just fine, just keep practicing and read a lot. As for lenses: I only use primes, I hate carrying around big heavy lenses. I use the 50mm 1.8 and the 85mm 1.8 for automotive and they work great, are small, lightweight and easy to carry.

A 24mm or 35mm are also are great for automotive.

Check out my flickr, not the best photos in the world but I shot them with the 85mm 1.8

browsing through your flickr and found this to be a beautiful shot. what did you use for these?

http://www.flickr.com …2/sizes/c/in/ph​otostream/