Detailed: 2008 Honda Accord - Alabaster Silver Metallic

[Marc08EX]

Wheels/Tires:
Meguiar's Deep Crystal on wheels
Meguiar's APC on tires and wheel wells
Meguiar's Cleaner Wax on wheels
Meguiar's Hyper Dressing on tires
EZ Detail Brush

Wash:
Gilmour Foam Gun with Meguiar's Gold Class
Meguiar's Microfiber Wash Mitt

Clay:
Meguiar's OTC Clay
Meguiar's Last Touch

Paint Correction:
Meguiar's G100
Menzerna Nano Polish (106FF) / LC White Pad

LSP:
Meguiar's NXT 2.0 / W9006 Finishing Pad

This car is very well maintained. The swirl marks in the paint were very minimal. The silver paint made the swirl marks hard to capture. I really didn't want to do much correction to the paint anyway. Anyway here are the pictures:




Trying to get a reflection shot.



























What do you guys think? It was really hard to capture the reflection given by the silver paint. Any advice as to how to take better pictures with a light colored car?

Thanks for looking!

[J. A. Michaels]

Re: Detailed: 2008 Honda Accord - Alabaster Silver Metallic

Your accord looks great. Very good work. Way to go.

[yalerd]

Re: Detailed: 2008 Honda Accord - Alabaster Silver Metallic

That Honda looks amazing!

[gto_don]

Re: Detailed: 2008 Honda Accord - Alabaster Silver Metallic

Honda looks great. Nice work. It is hard to get good reflection pictures on a light color vehicle. But IMO, you did a good job capturing the reflections and depth of the paint.

[SuburbanGuy20]

Re: Detailed: 2008 Honda Accord - Alabaster Silver Metallic

Amazing job! That paint looks almost like its about to just drip and slide right off the car, bc it looks so wet! The silver actually pops quite well, and IMO, and I'm sure a lot of others will agree, the lighter paints are harder to make pop, but you did one helluva job!

[aris]

Re: Detailed: 2008 Honda Accord - Alabaster Silver Metallic

Nice work

[Marc08EX]

Re: Detailed: 2008 Honda Accord - Alabaster Silver Metallic

Your accord looks great. Very good work. Way to go.

Thanks for the kind words.

That Honda looks amazing!

Thank you sir!

Honda looks great. Nice work. It is hard to get good reflection pictures on a light color vehicle. But IMO, you did a good job capturing the reflections and depth of the paint.

Thanks for the compliment! It's good to hear someone thinks you did a good job. The pictures don't do justice to how the paint pops under the sun.

Amazing job! That paint looks almost like its about to just drip and slide right off the car, bc it looks so wet! The silver actually pops quite well, and IMO, and I'm sure a lot of others will agree, the lighter paints are harder to make pop, but you did one helluva job!

Thanks for the compliment as well! I really tried to capture the depth of the paint but it was really hard. Maybe add a layer of carnauba wax on top?

Nice work

Thanks.

[Golden]

Re: Detailed: 2008 Honda Accord - Alabaster Silver Metallic

Looks great! My next car will be silver for sure...they just look awesome after NXT!

[Solo2]

Re: Detailed: 2008 Honda Accord - Alabaster Silver Metallic

Well done!

I'm amazed that the car is uniformly foamy in the wash pic. I'll have to look into that foam gun thingee....

Having 2 silver metallic cars myself (and one green non-metallic), I can tell you silver is very hard to photograph, but you can help make it better.

You'll notice full side or fronts in the direct sun don't do a wax job justice. High angles and longer-distance pics, however, do. I try to shoot before the dusk hour, but you have so limited time to play around.

I'm a Nikon DSLR guy shooting RAW (usually), but there is no reason most any point n' shoot on jpeg can't be great.

Some of this you may already know, so bear with me...

First, get a few camera cards. Memory is cheap, so take lots of pictures (but not just for the sake of taking pictures). Take pics of your family too (great way to experiment), and they'll love you for any nice ones you e-mail.

For outdoorsey with cars:

Settings: Quality - always set it to Fine (If there are only 3 settings, and Fine is the middle, set it to Super Fine)

Image Size - Medium at minimum, but go to Medium-Large to Large. If it uses a Meg setting range (i.e. 2M, 5M, 10M, 12M) go to 10M. Personally, anything over 10Meg I think is "marketing" and gimmick. Short of a DSLR, anything over 10Meg canactually start to lose quality, as most chip sensors are geared for 6-10Meg collection cycles.

Take your camera (even a p n' s) out of Auto: Set the Color to "Vivid".
Set the Lighting to "Daylight" (but play with "cloudy" sometimes). I find little value in tungsten, incandescent, etc. (that's just me)

If it has an adjustable ISO, set it to 400 (Works great in the sun), but learn to change it back to 200 if conditions warrant.

Night time is a learning curve. Keep "backlighting" to a minimum if you can. Sometimes boosting the Flash ISO helps, but its so dependent on the conditions at the time.

Keep background distractions to a minimum if you can. Look for a nice angle to park (like you did on the night shot). Most everyone has a nice park in the area (even of a city) to use fantastic backdrops. Walk around the car and critically look at it with your eye. Find a few nice angles. Frame it with the camera. Take a step or two or even three back. Re-compose the shot (rdouble check your settings and re-focus), and then shoot. Trust me.

You don't need to fill the entire dimensions of the picture frame, all the time.

Don't use the camera LCD screen as "final image" decision - use it just as a guide, as the actual image will look different in your computer. It's the settings you use that matter.

Learn how to do quick edits: delete the junky, out-of-frame, blurred, the ones that look the same "as that other shot or two" you took. In post-processing (I use Apple's Aperture, but any basic editor, even the free ones work too), I boost "highlights" on silver and white cars. This helps to lessen the brightness of those colors and aids in contrast.

After a few trial and errors, hopefully you find a combination of a few methods (time of day, favorite angles, slight change in a setting, etc.) that works best for you and your camera, and then stick with it.

Shameless plug to my SmugMug Autocross pic's page: Furball's Smug page

Bottom line: you can never have enough photographs of your life. Trust me.

Keep up the great work!

[Tuck91]

Re: Detailed: 2008 Honda Accord - Alabaster Silver Metallic

Nice job sir.

[Marc08EX]

Re: Detailed: 2008 Honda Accord - Alabaster Silver Metallic

Well done!

I'm amazed that the car is uniformly foamy in the wash pic. I'll have to look into that foam gun thingee....

Having 2 silver metallic cars myself (and one green non-metallic), I can tell you silver is very hard to photograph, but you can help make it better.

You'll notice full side or fronts in the direct sun don't do a wax job justice. High angles and longer-distance pics, however, do. I try to shoot before the dusk hour, but you have so limited time to play around.

I'm a Nikon DSLR guy shooting RAW (usually), but there is no reason most any point n' shoot on jpeg can't be great.

Some of this you may already know, so bear with me...

First, get a few camera cards. Memory is cheap, so take lots of pictures (but not just for the sake of taking pictures). Take pics of your family too (great way to experiment), and they'll love you for any nice ones you e-mail.

For outdoorsey with cars:

Settings: Quality - always set it to Fine (If there are only 3 settings, and Fine is the middle, set it to Super Fine)

Image Size - Medium at minimum, but go to Medium-Large to Large. If it uses a Meg setting range (i.e. 2M, 5M, 10M, 12M) go to 10M. Personally, anything over 10Meg I think is "marketing" and gimmick. Short of a DSLR, anything over 10Meg canactually start to lose quality, as most chip sensors are geared for 6-10Meg collection cycles.

Take your camera (even a p n' s) out of Auto: Set the Color to "Vivid".
Set the Lighting to "Daylight" (but play with "cloudy" sometimes). I find little value in tungsten, incandescent, etc. (that's just me)

If it has an adjustable ISO, set it to 400 (Works great in the sun), but learn to change it back to 200 if conditions warrant.

Night time is a learning curve. Keep "backlighting" to a minimum if you can. Sometimes boosting the Flash ISO helps, but its so dependent on the conditions at the time.

Keep background distractions to a minimum if you can. Look for a nice angle to park (like you did on the night shot). Most everyone has a nice park in the area (even of a city) to use fantastic backdrops. Walk around the car and critically look at it with your eye. Find a few nice angles. Frame it with the camera. Take a step or two or even three back. Re-compose the shot (rdouble check your settings and re-focus), and then shoot. Trust me.

You don't need to fill the entire dimensions of the picture frame, all the time.

Don't use the camera LCD screen as "final image" decision - use it just as a guide, as the actual image will look different in your computer. It's the settings you use that matter.

Learn how to do quick edits: delete the junky, out-of-frame, blurred, the ones that look the same "as that other shot or two" you took. In post-processing (I use Apple's Aperture, but any basic editor, even the free ones work too), I boost "highlights" on silver and white cars. This helps to lessen the brightness of those colors and aids in contrast.

After a few trial and errors, hopefully you find a combination of a few methods (time of day, favorite angles, slight change in a setting, etc.) that works best for you and your camera, and then stick with it.

Shameless plug to my SmugMug Autocross pic's page: Furball's Smug page

Bottom line: you can never have enough photographs of your life. Trust me.

Keep up the great work!

First of all, thanks for the time in writing such an informative post!!!

I agree that full sun shots don't really do justice to a lighter colored car. It seems that the paint disperses the sun's intensity and you can't really see the sun's reflection anymore. I should have taken more pictures at dusk like you said.

I'm currently using a point and shoot camera. I currently have it set to 3264x2448 (8MP) and the quality to fine (middle). I will try to use the super fine setting next time I try to take pictures. I have always used the auto feature and never really tried playing with the manual settings. Sometimes, I set the focus to macro setting if I want to take close up pictures of small things. But that's about all I know how to do LOL! What does the ISO mean and how does it affect the pictures being taken? I will try to play around with the settings now and see the results. Sometimes, it's just hard to keep track which settings go to which picture esp if there were a ton of shots taken.

As for the night time shots I took, I went to a dealership that uses bright white lights in their lot. I like using this because it enhances the gloss of the paint. However, it didn't do that much help for the silver paint of the car...

I'm planning to get a Nikon DSLR soon (D5000). It just takes better pictures and you have more control of how the picture is taken. Can you recommend any camera forums or websites that I could learn from? I would love to learn about photography.

Again, I really appreciate your help! Thanks also for the compliment.

[Marc08EX]

Re: Detailed: 2008 Honda Accord - Alabaster Silver Metallic

Looks great! My next car will be silver for sure...they just look awesome after NXT!

Nice job sir.

Thanks guys!

[Solo2]

Re: Detailed: 2008 Honda Accord - Alabaster Silver Metallic

First of all, thanks for the time in writing such an informative post!!!

I'm currently using a point and shoot camera. I currently have it set to 3264x2448 (8MP) and the quality to fine (middle). I will try to use the super fine setting next time I try to take pictures.

Truth be told, I keep a 4 year old Canon SD1000 (with flakey sensor when not in 'auto') in my car glove box, and an older still Nikon L11 (both p n' s camera's) in my briefcase. Both are great to have in a pinch.

My Nikon DSLR (with various lenses) is used for trips, travel, walk-abouts, Saturday drives, etc.

We're kinda digressing off forum, but feel free to PM me if you have any questions before we get too non-Meg's related (never P-O your moderators!)

Going to SuperFine wont increase "clarity" per say, but it allows greater cropping if you need it. Works great when your subject is say 25-50 feet away and you get too much background distraction, or you leave a finger on the corner of the lens!

A few p n' s camera's now skip a traditional "low" setting, and alter the way it was categorized of say 5 years ago (when life was simpler), such as Low/Fine/High, and Basic, M1, M2, Large.

If you can go to SF but drop the size down one setting (i.e. 5Meg), that may be a sweet spot for what you have.
[/QUOTE]

I have always used the auto feature and never really tried playing with the manual settings. Sometimes, I set the focus to macro setting if I want to take close up pictures of small things. But that's about all I know how to do LOL!

Remember, you don't need to change much in manual: just change to a Vivid color setting and Daylight mode. The rest is still, kind of, "automatic" in manual mode function.

What does the ISO mean and how does it affect the pictures being taken? I will try to play around with the settings now and see the results. Sometimes, it's just hard to keep track which settings go to which picture esp if there were a ton of shots taken.

Think of ISO as changing the sensitivity of the sensor to capture light. The range is (usually in p n' s) 200 - 1200. Lower equals less sensitive. A full DSLR goes 100 - 3200 (or more). The lower the number, the finer the pixelation. Between 100-400, we humans cant see much of a diff, but the camera does. 200 is a "norm" for the average buyer, but to get better "true" colors, you want to boost that sensitivity a bit (but it also works against you, as some colors, say a bright red, gets "really" red as you boost ISO!)

A night with a tripod, you can go to a very high ISO and shut off the flash. Makes interesting comparisons, but with a very high ISO, the pictures start to get grainy.

A Higher ISO (say 400) gives you a faster shutter speed and smaller aperture, too. But thats a topic for another day....

The higher ISO (400) allows more manipulation in post-processing, too. It's all a trade-off.

Your EXIF data on the image tells you ALL the settings that were used on that pic! Even pics uploaded to someone's Flickr.com record most "informative" data that was in place, if there web-user prefs are set to display it. Look for the "Additional" info and more properties links at the lower right to a Flickr picture.

Again, once you find a few little changes to tweak your method, you won't be changing it again all too often. (Think of electric seats.)

I'm planning to get a Nikon DSLR soon (D5000). It just takes better pictures and you have more control of how the picture is taken.

Trust me - it will not take better pictures (but yes, it has much much more control). Hard to believe, but's that true. Any DSLR has a full auto mode equal to the best p n' s, so it can be just as "simple" to use. The major benefit is shooting in RAW rather than jpeg. It's the range of manipulation available to you "along with" the greater control, or that ability to get a good photo to "pop" (once you get past the basics).

To sort-of quote Ken Rockwell (Nikon web-nerd), The best camera in the world is the one you hold in your hand at that time.

It's like performance driving: It's the nut behind the wheel that always needs adjusting!

Just taking a bit of time to learn the few settings that matter, matters!

Can you recommend any camera forums or websites that I could learn from? I would love to learn about photography.

How many years you got left in your life! I have a dozen I follow daily to weekly as a Nikon nut. Canon people have their own, as do the Pentax, Olympus, and newer Sony DSLR users. Some of the "skill" websites are germane to all photographers.

Also, what you use as a post-processor (iPhoto, Aperture, Picasa, CS, Lightroom, etc) will have their own blogoshere too.

(Disclaimer: No affiliation with the following - I am just a satisfied follower and general student of photography)

http://www.nikonians.org/

http://www.dcresource.com

http://photo.rwboyer.com/

http://www.kenrockwell.com/

http://diglloyd.com/index.html

http://www.photographybay.com/

http://digital-photography-school.com/

http://www.bythom.com/

http://kelbytv.com/dtowntv/

http://www.photographyblog.com/category/photography_techniques/

http://newschoolofphotography.com/content/

http://thediscerningphotographer.com/

http://thedigitalstory.com/photography/

Again, I really appreciate your help! Thanks also for the compliment.

You're welcome, and keep up the great wax work and enjoy ANY camera you have or want to get!...