Model Car Photography

Thought I'd give you an insight into how I take my model car pictures. It should be noted that all the pics that I upload have been reduced in size from the original image. This is so it quicker for them to display, and they don't take up as much space on my website. For example images on the whats new pages are reduced 25% for the bigger image, and 25% again for the thumbnails.

Cameras

For my pictures I use a Canon Powershot G2. This take images at a maximum size of 2272x1704, with the closest macro setting of 6cm. This is an older camera and has been superceded by better and cheaper cameras. Most cameras for sale now are 5.0 mega pixel, so they will shoot even larger pics than this. My suggestions are Canon, Olympus or Nikon.

Things to look for when buying a camera :-
Power - If you are taking lots of pictures it well worth looking for a camera that runs off a power supply rather than batteries. For most cameras this is an optional extra, but well worth the investment. There's no need to worry about having batteries charged when you want to take some pictures!.
Macro lens - The macro lens is used for close up work, which is what you'll be doing when photographing cars. It is a second lens inside the camera which will only work from 5cm up to 60cm. The closer you can get to the subject the better, but anything under 10cm will be okay.
LCD Screen - A must have. When taking shots in macro mode, you need the LCD screen to see what picture you are taking. Looking through the viewfinder does not accurately represent what the lens is seeing.
Memory - Get the largest storage card you can afford. That means 1GB or greater. On my camera each shots uses 1.5 to 2.0mb, so it doesn't take too long to fill up the card.
Settings - All cameras should have a multitude of settings that can be altered. But the main ones that you will need to alter are the white balance, and maybe the aperture value.

A final note - when I go shopping for a new camera I take some model cars with me and take some test shots. It may seem silly but it will give the shop a bit of a laugh. Obviously the lighting is not perfect, but it will give you an idea of whether you can achieve the results that you want. In particular note how close the camera can get to the model in macro mode.

Lighting

Lighting is one of the most important aspects of enabling you to get great pictures from your camera. There should be enough light so that the flash on your camera will not activate (in fact you should set it so it never goes off). If the flash goes off when taking macro pictures if will wash out the picture with too much bright light.
One of the easiest ways to get good lighting is to take the pictures outside. But you do not want direct sunlight. The main problem is that from day to day, the brightness will change causing a variation in the brightness of the pictures. What you are after is a consistency with regards to the amount of light.
So they way around this to use a light tent. I purchased one, but there are instructions on hwcollectors.com on how to build you own. The essential items you need are tungsten lights, paper/material to diffuse the light, and foil to reflect the light. The result you are after is a "wall of light", where there are no shadows. You do not want the lights shining directly onto the cars as you will see the reflections of the globes.
One other option that is available is a "macro light". It screws onto the front of the camera and connects to the external flash. It provides enough light to take the picture. They are not cheap, so I'd only get one of these if you were very serious about your photography.

My Setup



I shine two lights in from the left, pointing towards the reflecting foil. I place one light at the rear. The final light I place at the front. This light is not going through the tent but shining directly onto the model. It just gives that extra bit of light at the front so you don't get shadows around the wheels. This gives over 400w of light in total, and it's why you will need the sunglasses!. The setup may not look that bright in the pictures, but contrast it with the surrounding room which is lit with normal ceiling lights. It should be noted that it gets very hot working near all these lights, so it's not much fun if it's a hot day to start with.

Cameras Settings

To take great photos you cannot leave the camera on it's "auto" setting. These default settings will not give you the results you are after.

Macro mode - Click the button that sets it to that mode. Otherwise once you get in close, the picture will start to blur.
White Balance - The AWB setting will not give the result you require. Change the setting to tungsten, which is normally a globe symbol. Note that you have to be in a mode other than "auto" to change this setting.
Aperture - The aperture setting controls how in focus a picture is over it's depth. If you take a picture of a model at an angle, the front will be in focus, but the rear of the model will be more blurry. Increasing the aperture value (F setting), will bring more of the model into focus. Note that a larger value requires the camera lens to remain open for longer/ leading to the possibility of camera shake. I use F6.3 for all photos.
Zooming - To zoom or not to zoom?. If you get in extremely close to the model, you will get a parallex error, where the sides of the model are at an angle. If you move further away and zoom in, you will avoid this problem. But every slight movement at the camera is magnified at the model. This usually results in less sharp pictures as a result. You will need to experiment to find the best compromise.
Auto Focus - Always leave auto focus on. With model cars there are lots sharp edges and writing, which gives the camera lots to focus on.

Taking the photos

Into the Computer

You have now taken all your photos (for today). Load these into you computer via the supplied program. Most times these can be just dragged across via Windows Explorer.
Sometimes the photos you take are an incorrect colour or too bright. Use an image manipulation program to fix these (eg Photoimpact).
Now burn the images to a DVD so you don't have to go through the whole process again.
The final part of my process is to trim and rescale the image for publishing on this web site. I have included below the thumbnail size, the resized image, plus the original image. Note that have a bit of a border around my pictures but trim this when putting the picture on the web site.




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Last updated - November 2006