yes this is crucial if you are shooting in low light conditions, kinda like the parking garage i shoot in. If you are in manual mode on your camera, you can adjust the shutter speed. This is how long the shutter will stay open to let in the light to capture the image. Basically, the longer the shutter stays open, the more light it captures, making the picture brighter. You kind of have to take some sample shots to see what works best depending on the lighting conditions. When i was in the parking garage i believe the shutter speed was on 1/8th of a second. I had to go up to 1 second or half of a second to get the lighting i wanted. ***Another thing to note is, if you are using longer shutter speeds, you have to hold the camera still because even the slightest movement will make the picture blurry. This is why you need to set the camera on a tripod or a fixed surface. I just had my car parked in a certain way that i could place the camera on the surface of my car and aimed it at my buddies car to take the picture. Improvization is what it takes sometimes.Exposure Value (EV): Dont adjust this now, but make yourself familiar with it. Once you get out there and start shooting, review the image and if it looks to light or dark this is what you can adjust without touching anything else to make things easier on you. If the picture is too dark, adjust the EV to the positive side a bit and shoot again. If its too bright adjust the EV lower and shoot again. If you get the other basic settings down, then get your white balance set on the first few shots to see which looks best in the light you're shooting in, this will be the only thing you need to adjust as you continue to shoot at a location to try to get the best quality pictures.
I also like what was said about when to take pictures. I cannot stand it when people go out at noon and take pictures of their car out in the sun. It looks like complete crap unless you know what your doing. I hate the way my car looks sometimes with direct sunlight. it has to hit the paint just right to get the picture you want. Best times to take pictures is early morning or an hour or so before sunset. and cars will always look better in places where its sitting in a shadow or in a parking garage with outside light coming in, but not shining directly on the car. It brings out the colors and contrasts better.
If you can get photoshop get it. Its great and you can learn easy by following basic tutorials online. Thats how i taught myself how to use it. It really makes pictures pop if you get good with it.
About composition, what teachers will tell you is to use the RULE OF THIRDS. basically a photograph is divided into 3 even sections going vertical and horizontal. You never want to place an object directly in center. you place it off center using the rule of thirds. if you look at alot of my pictures, rarely is the car in the very center of the picture. if it is, its a very close up picture going down the length of the car or something.
if you look at this thread of a GTO photoshoot i did recently you can see how i used the rule of thirds, and used the different shutter speeds on the camera. there were close to the same pics, just the lighting is a little bit different. It took some posititioning of the car to get just the right lighting. There were lots of lights in the garage but we had to situate the car under the right light to get the pics we wanted. I think i noted which pic is my fav, and you can see the camera/lighting settings were just right, it turned out really good. I also had to photoshop EACH picture to adjust brightness/contrast and also edit out all the blue lens flaring from the hid headlights being on. That is done by matching colors and textures using photoshop and basically coloring over everything. Takes some patience and practice.
http://www.grandprixforums.net/gto-p...oot-36738.html
