It's very rare that we get any kind of overcast weather in Las Vegas, I'm stuck shooting the majority of cars in harsh sunlight during work hours but I saw this opportunity and decided to hop in a loan car and go take photos.
This is out at Jean Dry Lake bed near the California border.
Shot on Nikon D3300 with 50mm f/1.8 with a CPL
Iso 100 : F/4.5 : 1/500th
What do you think? Critiques welcome!
Amazing shot considering the dslr body you used
Can't imagine it would have been a limiting factor on this shoot. Not like autofocus or low-light performance were necessary. Still has 24 MP to play with.
Woops that came out the wrong way. I meant to say the imaged was shot very well even with the camera he used, I'm not discrediting it. I'm simply saying the images looks really good for the dslr he used. It's not like he used a 5d mark lV I'm simply saying image looks very nice from the dslr he used
Thanks guys, I've come to love the D3300 despite it's limitations, although I just upgraded to a d750 but I think I'll always keep it around for a backup. On this shot everything just kind of fell into place as I wanted.
I think the D3300 is a really capable DSLR for this kind of stuff. Once you process the raw files it would be hard to tell it from a 5D with the same lens.
Ya I agree but when stretched to it limits like lowlight performance then their would be a distinguishable difference
I agree, that’s basically what I meant though, I was saying it replying to your comment that it looked really good even with the camera he used.
But yeah I’m saying you aren’t pushing the camera on shoots like this so it wouldn’t look much different on something like a 5D after processing.
I am thinking along the lines that most images of this style are multiple exposures blended together anyway, low light performance doesn’t matter much in that scenario.
Most of the time this camera does great, the other times when it doesn't it's mainly user error. I can't fault it at all it's gotten me into photography and loving it. I do need to do some bracketing though, I'm going to start now that I have a dedicated mode on the D750.
I like the framing and composition but I would be curious what the car looked like on the other third, facing into the center of the image.
Might do a little editing to recover some of the shadows in the front end and knock down the bright highlights on the top side of the car. The car's coloring is mostly either deep black or washed out due to the lighting, I think compressing the range within the car itself would make it pop from the background a bit.
Yeah this car is a deep black metallic, I tried to recover a lot of the shadows in the front but I start losing detail and get a bunch of noise.
I looked back through my catalog to see if I composed any shots that way and I noticed a trend where all of my images are composed to the right third -_- though this angle helped cover up how dirty I got the car, the dirt on the side just ends up Blending into the reflection.
Yeah sometimes there's only so much you can recover. Though I may be spoiled by the dynamic range on my camera, I haven't really met a shadow I can't pull back if I just expose for the highlights. I like to use the brush tool in Lightroom with a luminance mask set pretty low so I'm only pulling back up the shadows themselves.
I should be able to recover a lot more now that I have the D750 if I ever run into this scenario again. I'm still fairly amateur when it comes to editing and making things look proper, but the advice is always greatly appreciated.
Wow I’d love to have this kind of location on the door step! I think the composition is cool, would like to see it if you blended a few exposures, feel like you can only ever get so far with a single exposure in auto photography - maybe a few different shots with your CPL at different positions, you could bracket as well to help you pull out the details as someone had mentioned below (but I don’t really think the front looks too crushed).
I would be at that location every day!
This Dry lake bed is one of the coolest locations around Las Vegas, I grew up riding dirtbikes out there and always loved it, Once I get my bike running again I'm going to take my camera deep into the desert to look for some cool vantage points.
I did end up spinning the cpl a few times but it really only changed the window reflections, this was the best of about 5 shots. I think if I just changed my shooting angle all together I would have gotten some more detail out of the front end. I'm definitely going to start shooting multiple exposures from now on, I've been watching more tutorials to hopefully do it properly and blend them without looking overly HDR'd
One benefit to living in the desert is it leads to very interesting backdrops and locations, it's almost bleak, allowing your subject to really pop.
If you ever make it out to Las Vegas, Look for 7 Magic Mountains, Jean Dry Lake Bed, Red Rock Canyon, and Valley of Fire. Those are the hot spots.
Thank you for the recommendations :) I live in the UK but maybe one day!
Glad to hear you're looking at multiple exposures next, there's some amazing tutorials out there and it's very rewarding once you get going, it seems auto has a fairly open community when it comes to processing which helps, some of the tutorials I like were posted by members on this site.
As an aside, I'm already getting jealous thinking about the images you can make in Vegas, all the best!
Is this one shot or a composite? On less than optimal days I will use a CPL to cleanup the reflections on the side windows/doors or the windshield/hood. then combine those pieces. You can only bring up black until it turns grey, unlike brightening up a color.
Sick shot, you should definitly work for Volvo !
I just now saw this comment. I appreciate that!