FN2 at Sunset - HDRI
It was like I’d never been away as Rich rolled up on Sunday morning for us to do some car washing. After the usual chit chat and watching the F1, we gave the cars a quick wash then headed to take some photos…



MR-S at Sunset - HDRI
I’ve really missed my car being in China. It was fun to wash and tootle around in, just like old times. I’m still in love with it, I think it’s a really pretty car as standard.

FN2 Civic at Sunset
This is actually Rich’s second FN2 (Civic Type R). It’s the same colour as his old one, but sports this slightly different front bumper.

FN2 Civic at Sunset
Still the same Type R goodness though.

MR-S at Sunset - HDRI
The light made for some nice photos.

MR-S at Sunset - HDRI
My car’s ass.

FN2 Civic at Sunset
Rich’s car’s ass.

ZZW30 MR2 at Sunset
Posing!

MR-S at Sunset - HDRI
I love how the paintwork looks almost golden.

ZZW30 MR2 at Sunset
I don’t get skies like that in China.

MR2 and FN2 at Sunset
All in all a good day. Just like old times. 🙂

Technical Stuff.

I originally went out to take some strobist photos, using my flashes to light the cars. However, my radio transmitter ran out of juice. Saves wasting the good light, I decided to experiment with some HDRI photography. I used AEB (Auto Exposure Bracketing) to take 3 shots for each “photo”- one normal, one under exposed and one over exposed. The three photos are then merged together later and it basically means you get more detail in your shadows and highlights. You’re supposed to use a tripod so all the shots line up nice, but I find it really inhibits my creativity. So, I just started shooting hand-held. The quality probably fell from this, some came out blurry, but really… tripods are too much effort.

Post work was about 10-15mins per shot. Import into lightroom, export to photomatix, generate both a 32-bit HDRI tone mapped image and a 32-bit exposure blended image. Then into photoshop to manually mask the two together, and a little bit of tweaking. Finally; back to lightroom for vignetting, etc.

You can see the entire set on flickr, here.

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One Comment to “Quick car wash and photoshoot”  

  1. 1 Oscilloscope :

    when car washing, i just use a high pressure cleaner and my own hands to clean off those hardened dirt”‘-

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