Best focal length for shooting cars

What do you think is the best focal length for full car angle shoots on vehicles?

Slightly telephoto (like 50 to 85mm)?

 

This is just my experience, take it for what its worth.

Ive found that using a fixed focal length lens is the best for photographing a car. But if I dont have one with me, I allways try to use a focal length in the middle of what the lens can handle. If its a 28-135, Ill use somewhere around an 80mm. I run into alot less problems with sun flare, and the cars dimensions stay closer to real life.

Again, your mileage may vary.

 

I find that the best quality pics I have taken have been with a fixed 50mm lens.

 

I have a 50mm f1.8 lens and was thinking it could work but wanted to see if there was others staying slightly telephoto (something greater than 35mm). One key is to watch the depth of field to insure the entire vehicle is in focus.

 

It depends on what you are trying to accomplish with the shots.

A wider angle (like 24mm on a crop sensor or 35mm on a full frame camera) will create distortion in the shape of the car that could be desirable, depending on the artistic intent.

Ex. taken at 24mm on a full frame camera:



Ex. taken at 35mm on a full frame camera:



Using a longer focal length will keep the proportions of the car accurate in the photo and pull the background in closer.

Not the best example, but 65mm on a full frame camera:



You can see how the perspective changes.

Ideally, if I wanted to have a car accurately represented, with no distortion and I had plenty of room to move back and fit everything in I would shoot at 85mm or higher.

There really is no "correct" lens choice when shooting just about any subject.

 

a 50mm on a crop sensor camera (what camera are you using?) should be fine for not introducing major distortions.

 

It is a D70s / D90 (yes, a small sensor). I took these today. I was just playing with the lens. I just got it. Plan to get a 35mm f1.8 soon.

 

Then 50mm should work well for general use.... absolutely.

 

Good information there brianja, I've been curious about full frame cameras...what I mean I was curious what the full frame would do for distortion, great explanation :thumb:

 

BTW. In case it was not obvious, I over exposed both pics. I have usually sent my d70s to overexpose by 0.3 EV but I mis-judged the preview images (the sun was bright) so lost the highlights.

It always pays to under exposure rather than over expose. These were straight from the camera with just cropping and resizing.

 

hmmm.... I usually will prefer to err on the side of over exposed. I find it easier to recover blown highlights successfully than to recover lost shadow detail. Increasing exposure to recover shadow detail always leads to noise for me.

Check out this link.... "Expose Right"

Everyone has their own techniques I suppose.

 

Full frame really just makes the lenses perform as they should based upon the focal length written on the lens.

On a crop sensor you just multiply by the crop factor to find what the equivalent focal length is.

For example, Canon uses a 1.6x crop factor. Therefore a 35mm lens on a crop body would be the equivalent view of (35mm x 1.6) 56mm on full frame.

You will wind up with more vignetting, etc. with certain lenses on full frame because lenses are being used all the way to their edges.

 

:bla2:

You know, we were just talking about crop factor at the photoclass I'm currently taking and to be honest I had no idea there was such a thing as a crop factor. The teacher went on and on about crop factor this crop factor that..:bla2: :bla2: I felt silly asking but I couldn't take it any more and I put my hand up like as though I was in kindergarden lol...any who the classes are really paying off for me, who knew taking a picture could be so technical..but I'm enjoying every minute of the classes :thumb:

Any who, thank you for your feed back always good feed back :thumb:

 

I think the "nifty fifty" or rather the 50 1.8 would be great. From what I've read, you can really play with DOF and it's a rather cheap lens to play with.

As far as erring to exposure levels, just about all content I've read suggests to err on the side of underexposure since there is more digital data to manipulate versus one that is slightly overexposed. Of course, everyone has their preference and I tend to agree with erring on the side of underexposure since Photoshop or Elements can easily fix it.

 

For me, I like the wide shots, so I'm going to take something in 10-24mm

 

I did look at the referenced link and as expected it said to expose enough to insure no clipped highlights so to prevent that you have to err on the side of under exposing. It also said you needed to shoot raw (I do not often but can when I get the D90) to recover more but this is true in either case. The net is if you clip highlights (histogram off the edge) you have lost info you cannot get back.

 

Such a great (and cheap!) little lens!

 

Really the 50mm is cheap :shead: :shead: the one I saw was about $1,600.00 or so...definitely not a cheap lens if you ask me...but I so want one :giggle:

I have this lens and I don't appreciate it's true value, I hardly ever use it...but the more I learn the more I can see the value of owning this lens, hopefully in due time I'll get the hang of using this wide lens.

 

Nica, I think the specific lens they are talking about is like 85 bucks.

http://www.amazon.com/Canon-50mm-1-8-Camera-Lens/dp/B00007E7JU

 

Really, which lens would that be? I've never seen a lens that cheap..is it off ebay? Mind you all I've been looking at are the L lenses, I have a thing for the L lenses...I ruined my self, I purchased one L lens and now all I want are L lenses :doh: