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Just thought I'd contribute.

- RemieGino14 -

The most recent Supra.








OG Enkei Selbach 3-Piece 18x9.5+22 all around. Got them off my friend's R33.

I miss that car

Sir, the lower right image in your sig is of a car that was once local to me. Not terribly quick, but clean as hell and the owner was a brilliant photographer. I have no idea what happened to it after he sold it though, he moved out of state shortly afterward and to my knowledge nobody in the know has seen the car since it sold.

Same car is in this shot, which is on many peoples' desktops to date:

NOT MY PICTURE

SPOILER

Messed around with this one on PS. What do you think?


Also,a detail shot of a Continental GT I parked next to yesterday.

Out of curiosity, have you calibrated your monitor with the photoshop software? Your pictures always seem to come out dark. At root, that's the side effect of a polarizer, but if you don't overexpose or edit the RAW afterward to compensate, then you're getting underexposed photos when shadows or non-direct lighting is involved. If you're doing that, it's probably just calibration differences.

In result, you lose too much detail in the darker parts of the car, in this case the wheels and roofline. That's one of the major reasons I overexpose a stop or two depending on lighting conditions and then edit back down later. You can always take detail away in darker areas, but you can't add detail that the sensor never picked up.

Also to note, fender fitment FTW?

On the flip side, I really really really like that shot of the Bentley badge. It's simple, naturally monochromatic, and the uneven lighting just sets it off for me. Again, a little dark, but it's honestly fine that way. You could bring out the white in the "B" for effect, but it's still good as is.

Since I didn't get much feed back for photos, I'm going to be posting up a link again. Is there anything I need to work on?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wutpandaa/set...57627035370727/

There are a couple of photos I liked on the stream you had. The favourites I have so far are the FT-86 II front on, the LF-A and the SLS AMG with the doors up.

Here's some advice for the following pics:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wutpandaa/592...157627035370727
This one would have been nice if you stood in front of the sign description and took a shot of it similar to the one on the sign. That would have been a cracker. Also, noted that the shot came out darker than normal which is probably the best you can do.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wutpandaa/592...157627035370727
Monochrome (or better know as B&W) it. If you had a tripod, I would have used it and set it to have a long exposure. The time would blur everyone whilst the car would have stood still in time.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wutpandaa/592...157627035370727
If you moved just a little to the right, you could have taken both cars which would have been a great shot.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wutpandaa/592...157627035370727
Just a bit more towards the left a bit. Otherwise, good effort.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wutpandaa/592...157627035370727
There's a slight lack of focus on the bottom of the car so take care next time. Also, if funds allow, get a fisheye and get in close with the car. This would make it a bit imposing. Other than that, nothing else you could have done anyway.

I honestly have a hard time critiquing photos from formal auto shows. Lighting is always beyond terrible, I use them more for shooting exercises than for shots I'm going to publish.

Angles are good, creative, and show off the vehicles and specific lines/angles you were playing off of.

I did especially like this one though, lighting came through for you:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wutpandaa/592...157627035370727

My Daily Beater



This post has been edited by thomas124C41 on Jul 17 2011, 04:29 PM

No,I havent calibrated my monitor with PS. How does one do that? I have CS5 btw.

Before this weekend,I really had little experience with Photoshop,but I experiminted with a couple of pictures about 3 weeks ago. Those pictures,however,didnt make it onto my Flickr or anywhere online. Normally,I just edit them with Windows Photo Gallery,but obviously PS has more options. I just went down some of the options in the Image Adjustments menu,and experiminted with them and got them to something I liked,as well as doing a tiny bit of sharpening. After all,it is a pretty decent improvement over the original. The body color and the plant behind it are more vibrant.

Here is the original unedited picture. Straight off of the camera.

Edited.


About the overexposing part,does shutter speed matter for that? What do you use when you do that? For this,I used 1/40 with my 18-55,with the dial on the TV label. What would be best for hot,sunny days? Thats pretty much all Texas gets now.


Also,the Bentley badge...it was sheer luck that it came out the way it did. Ive tried numerous detail shots with my 18-55 but almost all of them come out unfocused or shaky. Plus,knowing I dont shoot well in garages made me worry it wouldnt come out. That picture had very little editing done to it. Just desaturated,and then the brightness and contrast were adjusted slightly. When it came out of the camera,it had very little color to it to begin with.

Photos are always harder to process once they're in .jpg form, which is why I always shoot in RAW, which forces me into the Camera RAW editor in PS in order to get a useable .jpg in the first place. In there you can make sharpening/noise adjustments as well as adjustments to specific color and brightness/contrast ranges, all without losing any real quality before conversion.

In that sense, I don't meter any more, I let the camera sort things out and adjust lighting to my liking later. At the same time though, I'm not completely ignorant of roots in film and can recommend you give the "Sunny 16" rule a shot; f/16 at 1/100 or 1/125 should work great for most direct-sunlight shots with ISO set at 100.

JPEG is fine if you know that your pics will turn out okay. By this, I mean you're absolutely confident that the pics will come out right. Otherwise, you're better off doing RAW as cmspaz indicated. Having absolute control over the white balance and as well the amount of sharpening/noise reduction is immense.

Take this shot for example:



Before, if I had done this in JPEG, all of the background behind the car would easily be blown out by the harsh light behind. Thanks to the RAW, I'm able to control it and desaturate it without any issue.

Thanks for the info. But,I dont think Im ready to do RAW editing just yet. I need more time and experience in PS.

I find it to be honestly easier to have everything on tabs in one panel than to have to go through and apply individual filters/adjustment layers for every minor change I want to make. That's just super complicated and annoying. Camera RAW is the by far the most useful tool in PS to date, hands down.

Read up Exposing To The Right (ETTR).

SPOILER

the rest of these photos are here
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=1338774557&aid=2132766

spoilered because its even off my screen

This post has been edited by WRX22B1998 on Jul 21 2011, 06:05 PM

@WRX22B1998: Sorry, I saw the 2 S15s before I saw the 370z..

That 370Z is SEXY.

i know huh, saw it and was like

why are you apologising for your own personal taste?

This post has been edited by WRX22B1998 on Jul 21 2011, 06:04 PM

Totally ignored the subject...so..

You don't even need Photoshop, you could just use the converting software that canon has to adjust the white balance and brightness before converting to JPEG. That's what I pretty much did with my photos, no Photoshop used at all. Just adjusting the white balance and brightness.

Meguiars MotorEX 2011




more here & here

This post has been edited by WRX22B1998 on Jul 24 2011, 02:52 PM

@GT3RS
To properly calibrate your monitor, you need to buy a calibration device for monitors. There are many out there but the one that I use is the Spyder3 Pro by Datacolor.
Although you could try printing a picture and then compare it with your monitor and calibrate it manually but it's a big pain in the ass and not as accurate.
And no, you do not need PS to lightly edit RAW photos, you can do that with the Canon software that came with your camera although the desaturated and decontrasted photos is caused by your kit lens. The 18-55 is not a very good lens to be honest and I think it's time to upgrade the lens.
I don't have any shots here because there's a surprising lack of nice cars now here in Vienna, might be the weather, it has been quite grim the whole week. Might as well do some street photography.

This post has been edited by Bloody_Monday on Jul 24 2011, 04:57 PM

Ok maybe I'll share this.

Car #1 ~Range Rover Sport Autobiography Edition~ by Gothika Genta, on Flickr
It's a Range Rover Sport Supercharged Autobiography Edition from a friend of my dad's friend. We had trouble keeping up with them on a hill climb in the Austrian mountains. Of course, they have 510 HP while we have a miserable 200 or so.

The lens will have to wait. Im a bit short of money right now. But imo the 18-55 is doing its job for now.