Photographing cars

[silve225]

Hi everyone i have the 18-55mm kit lens, 50mm 1.8D lens, and the 55-300mm lens. What im trying to do is take a picture of a car and get the background to blur out. I can only do that if part of the car is in the frame. Once the whole car is in the frame the background is clear.

 

[Aloicious]

what settings are you trying to shoot at? you should be able to get a decent background bokeh with your 50mm.

also what are the specifics of what you're tring to do (i.e. do you want the ENTIRE car in focus, and the ENTIRE background blured? or are you looking to get just a specific section of the car in focus, and just the farther background blurred? if that makes sense) if you have an example of what you're looking to achieve, that would help too...

 

[silve225]

Im looking for the entire car to be in focused and the entire background to be blured. I'll try and find a picture now and post it

 

[silve225]

Here's an example of a picture i found on google images of what i want to do. But when i do it the picture will be taken outside

 

[Aloicious]

Thats likely a composite image, its not a single shot (or its a selectively blured single shot), you can see the floor is out of focus where the car is in focus. basically you can do this a couple of ways, either take 2 shots of the car, one at like f8 or something to get the whole car in focus, and another at f1.8 focused at the front of the frame to blur out as much background as possible, then layer the f8 car shot on top of the f1.8 background....OR you could take 1 image of the car at f8 or something to get the whole car in focus, then blur the background using a blur methood in PP to selectively blur out the background (which I believe is how that particular shot was done.)

(btw if you don't own that image you might want to just post a link to it, due to forum rules)

 

[silve225]

which blur method would you use if i do it in photoshop

 

[Aloicious]

this is not a super great example, but I did a selective blur on this image from a show earlier in the year:

not quite to the same amount as the example you posted, but enough to blur out the crowd and busy background. all I did was duplicate the car only on a separate layer, then blur the background on the lower layer (you can either do the blur tool, or just filter->blur->gaussian blur (or another type of blur, whatever you prefer)...and that way you're only producing blur on the background layer, separate from the car.

 

[silve225]

ok thanks

 

[Aloicious]

no prob just remember that with cars you have to pay attention to transparent surfaces (e.g. glass), and getting the background THROUGH the glass to be equally blurred and still look correct can be harder to do, I think in the image you posted, whoever did the editing on it kinda missed the mark on that one IMO the door glass looks wrong, there's no feeling of transparency, I believe they just pasted a piece of the background over the window. if you're aware of that when you're shooting, you can position things at angles to make that alot easier for you.

 

[greybeard]

The example you posted looks to me like they selected the back ground and then added the amount of blur to the entire background rather than using the blurring tool alone. They probably used the blurring tool to touch it up.

 

[Imnatelol]

A long lens with a large aperture and an isolated car will yield you the results you wish. Here is an example of my D70 with a 50mm 1.8 straight out of the camera:

Being further away and a longer focal length would have certainly yielded better results. I would definitely stay away from artificial bokeh, in my opinion it looks very cheesy and is easy to spot, just like in the picture of the R35 a few posts up.

 

[ratssass]

(btw if you don't own that image you might want to just post a link to it, due to forum rules)
...good job,alo