Thanks very much guys! Some really good stuff this month again!
Socketr you keep doing some proper cool stuff! Really like your style
Well done to everybody.
Not HDR tho
bit more complicated.
Had a studio light for some fill, as well as the quite high contrast light of the day (the sun was very high, was about 3pm, so it gave the hard edged effect) and a ND/polariser combo filter set. Was quite a complicated shot because it was strong light with the fill, and I wanted a low depth of field shooting at F4 which meant that the shutter speed was very fast around 1/1000 (with sun and fill, my camera doesn't support syncing over 1/250). So needed to bring it down with an ND filter then to bring out the blue of the sky I used a polariser. Because both reduce the light I had the fill on 1/4 intensity (just to light the car), and a shutter speed of around 1/100. So the light was firing giving the fill on the car (with the fill at 1/4 with F4 and 1/100th the car would be completely blown out as well as the rest of the scene without the filters) so the ND brings the exposure down 5 stops (so this works the other way without the studio light the car would be very underexposed but the sky would be right) So with the two together its almost like a fooled exposure, very difficult in strong light. My ND filter is like a welders helmet type lets very little light through giving this very high contrast effect.
Generally they are used for pics where there are a lot of people in a scene like the pyramids for example the longer shutter speed would mean all the people would be blurred out meaning the shot would look like a ghost town when it is really full of people. Or if you want to shoot a pic of a bridge without cars same effect.
Similar to using NDs for sunrise or sunset. But with the welders version you can get effects that would normally come from an ND at sunrise and sunset but in the middle of the day in full harsh daylight (like the movement of the water etc) but obviously wouldnt have the colour, you would have to use another type of coloured ND grad for that.
Which is how you do a shot like this without using HDR technology, doing it right in camera but obviously a lot more effort but less time at the machine
It also looks more real than HDR, you get stupid greys unbelievable foregrounds and skys so this looks more real with a similar contrast effect. But HDR is a lot easier especialy without the kit. Also took me a while to work out how to get around the light.
Also used a 70-200mm 2.8 at 200mm to compress the perspective, (the background wasn't great so with a wider lens, the bg would look more sparse leading to a less concentrated subject, with a telephoto it makes the background compress so it looks a lot closer to the subject). Also lying on the ground at F4 gave the foreground the out of focus bokeh effect. Lying on the ground at about 30 meters away also gives the car the correct perspective. Makes the car look like its at eye level with no distortion, apart from the compression of the background.
BMW Z4M Coupe CSL Wheels by
tom_scott88, on Flickr
This one was shot with a wide angle lens close up, you can see the distortion of the car and also how far away the BG appears compared to the subject. Just to show how different lenses give different effects.
Then in post I added a slight vignette, reduced the saturation slightly and added a slight S curve contrast just to darken the darks and lighten the highlights, and used a high pass sharpening technique which makes the car jump from the background (no point in sharpening a whole image at F4 as the out of focus areas due to the low depth of field means that the bokeh is sharpened, there no point in sharpening blurred detail as all it does is create noise. Bokeh needs to be smooth. So this effect means you can paint the sharpening where you want it using a layer mask)
Alot of people have been messaging and emailing me about how i shoot the pics, so although length (sorry) theres a bit of insight into my workflow
