"Designing a magazine cover" for school, need cars & photo-tips

[Stein]

I need to design a magazine cover for design class, and I need to take pictures. I figure the best thing for me would be to design a car magazine cover.

Well, I'd like to put some Subarus on the cover. Anybody near Yarmouth who would like to meet up sometime Wednesday afternoon? I'll take either a dirty scoob, a clean scoob (don't wash+wax just for me though), or whatever else you've got.

I also need some tips: I have two digital cameras. One takes low-res pictures but has a good lens/sensor, and the other takes pretty high res pictures but has a pretty lame lens or sensor (I can't take close pictures with it, but for cars that won't be a problem).

...and help with taking the pictures. The cameras have a manual mode, but it doesn't let me do much with it (I can change exposure and I think focus, but I'm not 100% sure what the numbers mean

).

I can also just use your pictures if you post them up here, but I want to take some anyway. I'll have to take pictures of our Nissans if I can't take some of Soobs.

Information:

I'm thinking around 6, we'll meet at the Royal River Park parking lot:

here and here.

Directions from Rte. 1

People who will come:

nategr8ns at 5:55

Jimbo and dog at 6

Sub_Leg

hockysk8 at 6

2.5RS Dan and maybe sister

Win?

___

___

 

[STInate]

Feel free to use any of the pics of my car kicking around here. I will be heading up that way sometime thursday if you want to take a few pictures.

 

[Stein]

I'm supposed to get the pictures by class on thursday, but I'll ask if I can get some new ones for friday's class.

Anybody have a guide for taking those 3-exposure pictures? that's called HDR right? I want to try making some of those.

I have access to photoshop so if I can't figure it out I can do a fake one.

 

[Jimbo]

I'll be home by about 5:45 on Wednesday, but the only Subie in the driveway will be the new land yacht...wife will have the WRX off-site

 

[Stein]

I'd prefer a car-car (how many covers feature SUVs, you know?), but some sweet pictures of the Tribeca parked on a hill or something...

 

[Stein]

Bump

Hey Jim, I think it would be cool if we did a "Face off" type of pic with your Tribeca and my dad's Murano with all of the headlights on. I guess it depends how dark it gets.

It may rain, which could make for a cool aggressive pic (well, the cars aren't really that aggressive looking

.

Would you mind bringing your camera if it has an auto-focus feature? It will take better pictures than our digital camera, but won't matter too much because for some reason my design teacher hasn't heard of high-res. My magazine is supposed to be '8" by 10" with 72 pixels' (i.e. dots per inch). I can't stand it

.

 

[GClark]

you should do it in Black and White

 

[09FXT]

If you would like to borrow my camera, I could drop it off for you.

 

[hockysk8]

i live 30 seconds from Yarmouth (middle rd cumberland) if you want to shoot a sexy sti

 

[Stein]

Erik, of course I do!

If you guys just want to meet up Wednesday afternoon, I could take a bunch of pictures.

Jeff, I'm not 100% sure how to use a DSLR (I've been wanting one, but a car is my first priority

). I know enough to take pictures though. If you can't make it Wednesday, you can drop it off sometime or we can meet. When will you be passing through Yarmouth?

I saw STInate's picture here and want to sort of go for something similar if it rains a little but not too hard.

I don't know of any good places for taking car pictures in Yarmouth. I assume that some place near Royal River Park would be cool. We could do both scenic shots with trees and the river and some cool industrial-ish shots (maybe) with the train bridge (not that we'd be stupid enough to park cars on it

).

Does 6ish work? We could start it earlier and people could just arrive when they want. I'll bring a tripod, but I'm not sure if it uses the standard tripod mount or a smaller size.

 

[09FXT]

I've got a multi head tripod I can bring. The camera is pretty straight forward to use. I usually get out of work between 4:30 & 5 so I could drop the camera off any after that.

 

[Evan]

if its only for computer screen viewing, you only need half a megapixel, if you want to print it off at normal magazine size (at say 240dpi) then even 5mp is fine.

 

[Stein]

cool, I take it you don't want to hang around? I have a tripod but we could have multiple cameras going if people wanted. We can do more than just a picture for my art project. I could get some cool pictures to make wallpapers out of.

P.S. Does anybody know how to take HDR photos? I can convert them to a single picture using Photoshop CS2's HDR macro, but I can't get good enough pictures (just inside my house, mind you). They're just coming out icky.

Plus some artifacts are appearing in the pictures from my dad's camera, so I think the sensor is dirty

. Not sure what else could be causing this. Here's the picture in all its high-res glory.

why is it so grainy?

This isn't one of my HDR attempts, just one of the pictures. When I want to convert the pictures it said that there wasn't enough range in the picture

.

edit: Evan, you got a ninja post in there. Thanks for the input, but I usually use 1.3mp for wallpapers (yes I know, that's not something I should know

). For class, I'm just designing the whole cover for a piece of 8.5"x11" printer paper. The printer is a piece of crap, but I still want it to look good on the computer.

What do you guys think about this area? The lot to the right is the park, and the lot to the left is the water...building... If the lot of the water thing is empty, that would be sweet to take pictures of with the river and bridge in the background. Not sure where else to do it.

 

[2point5RS_Dan]

I'm close to Yarmouth, I have a beat to crap car though. I can snag an SLR and tripod if needed.

 

[Stein]

Evan, you got a ninja post in there. Thanks for the input, but I usually use 1.3mp for wallpapers (yes I know, that's not something I should know

). For class, I'm just designing the whole cover for a piece of 8.5"x11" printer paper. The printer is a piece of crap, but I still want it to look good on the computer.

What do you guys think about this area (closer up)? The lot to the right is the park, and the lot to the left is the water...building... If the lot of the water thing is empty, that would be sweet to take pictures of with the river and bridge in the background. Not sure where else to do it.

Dan, you can definitely join in. I may use a group picture for my project or just one or two cars, but the more the merrier. It sounds like I won't need the camera or the tripod, but thanks for offering.

P.S. Photoshop can remove dents

.

 

[2point5RS_Dan]

Going to depends when I get done my paperwork for job stuff in P-town. If I'm free and you guys figure out a place and time I'll probably show up.

 

[Stein]

I posted the links of a place to meet up, I don't know if the scenery will be good though, so we may move or something.

P.S. I'm going for my license on June 1st. Finally!

edit: first post edited

 

[2point5RS_Dan]

I showed my sis this thread and she got interested. We may both end up showing up. If she comes I'll bring my laptop with photoshop. She's got some 2 cents about HDR.

HDR can be artifically done in Photoshop by using the exposure adjustment layer. It's pretty self explanatory, just increase or decrease the exposure to what you want. Save one file as the original, one with an exposure of +1, and one with an exposure of -1. You can do more, or more files (+2, -2, and so on) if you want. Then just merge in Photoshop or photomatix. Don't go too heavy on the tone mapping or it will just look really artifical.
Or, you can do it with your camera or any SLR camera by manually changing the exposure and taking different shots, which yields better results, especially if you are working with RAW.

HDRs are only really good when you have a lot of detail, usually in landscape shots or the like that contain a lot of highlights and blacks that are very fine. The HDR brings out these details and enhances the lighting of the image when done correctly. This is why your clock picure didn't really work. There isn't enough lighting to begin with, and there isn't enough range of tones for the different exposures to work with.

This is an example of overdone HDR done in Photomatix Pro.

Whether or not you intend on doing HDR processing on a photo, try shooting in RAW. With a JPG, your camera applies things like white balance, sharpening, saturation/contrast boost to the photo before it saves it to the card. With a RAW file, the actual data from the sensor is saved, and it's up to you to determine things like white balance during processing. This may sound like more work, but you can still set defaults on your camera as you are shooting, and you can make batch adjustments to many like-photos. Better for HDR too, if you plan on it.

RAW files will contain a much higher range of tones. You can make minor adjustments to exposure in post with NO repercussions (like clipping shadows/highlights or gradient banding), or have a lot more data to use while making selective adjustments (like dodging and burning).

Yeah I didn't get it when I read it either.

 

[Stein]

My family's point-and-shoots can't do RAW (at least not that I know of) but I was able to play around in Aperture-Priority (or something) mode and change the exposures. When combining in images in photoshop, on one set of images, I got an error "there is not enough dynamic range" or something similar.

I'll bring my school laptop. It's a Macbook, which sucks to begin with, but I'm not allowed to install windows on it :. for a 2ghz core2duo and 1gb of ram (not enough for my photoshop work, but whatever), the thing is slow as molasses.

I have a feeling your sister uses a Mac...

I have some history reading to do, but I'll check back once more before bed.

Dan, I have to show you my new key-chains. You're probably the only one who will appreciate it, but my friends at school (who don't know much about computers) got a kick out of it anyway.