Recommendations

[funky]

I have a Canon Eos 350D. I do mostly landscape photography and it's all self taught. So I'm very bad when it comes to numbers and if stops and lenses. I am going to be doing alot more car photography. Mostly outdoors but also some indoors with garage style lighting. I'm looking for two lenses. I have a lens that's 17-55 and also one to 250. So I'm looking for an intermediate of the two. And one wide-angle, maybe even fisheye type lens.

I will also be looking for some filters. Again I haven't used any really. I usually do all my work in Photoshop after the event. What lenses and filters would you recommend for car photography? Or any other accessories. I really know nothing when it comes to that end of things. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

[RobDickinson]

funky said:

I have a Canon Eos 350D. I do mostly landscape photography and it's all self taught. So I'm very bad when it comes to numbers and if stops and lenses. I am going to be doing alot more car photography. Mostly outdoors but also some indoors with garage style lighting. I'm looking for two lenses. I have a lens that's 17-55 and also one to 250. So I'm looking for an intermediate of the two. And one wide-angle, maybe even fisheye type lens.

I will also be looking for some filters. Again I haven't used any really. I usually do all my work in Photoshop after the event. What lenses and filters would you recommend for car photography? Or any other accessories. I really know nothing when it comes to that end of things. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

You need to mention your budget too I'm afraid, we could spend 1000's here for you.

Wide angle you have a choice of 3 dedicated UWA's, sigma 10-20mm (270), tamron 11-18(250), canon 10-22 (400 - possible rebate). These will all keep distortion to a relatiev minimum compaerd to fish eye lenses but will have usefull distortion if used close.

For a mid range lens you have anythgin from the expensive, lareg and heavy canon 24-70f2.8L to many cheaper lenses. Quite often primes (like the excelent canon 50mm f1.8) are a whole lot sharper and quicker than zooms. Best if you let us know a little more info asd to what you have , what you want and budget.


Filetrs, for landscapes your most likely to use/need a neutral density gradient filter (ND Grad) for darkening skies, and a circular polariser (CP) for reducing glare/reflections. A decent sized, thin quality CP filter will cost a fair bit too.

For cars the two mentioned above will work, your going to get most milage out of the CP.

Unless your photographing moving cars neither your chosen subjects are moving, so you dont have to worry about shutter speed (CP filters reduce light, remove up to 2 stops of exposure). So buy/use a solid tripod and remote/cable release (tripod is the single most important element to all this).

For indoor car shots you prolly will want some additional light in the form of flashes,softboxes and reflectors.

[funky]

Thanks a million. Your recomendations helped alot. I bought the canon 10-22 which i had already been looking at before the post. So your reply compounded the fact it was quality. I also bought a canon 28-105. I cannot wait to get my hands on them to do something different.

I was wandering too about a random thought i had about taking a photo of a car. Say i wanted to take a photo of a car with rain falling and getting the maximum effect from the rain. How would i take a photo which would show the rain hitting the car and make the droplets stand out.

Thats a really terrible explanation but hey i did my best Thanks again!

[mneame]

to get the rain looking how you want it, you 'll have to play around with the lighting. try different angles. flash lighting may help. could be a bit of trial and error until you find what works best for you.

when i try different things out i make a note of the frame number and the settings before moving to the next setup. that way you can go back to the same setup in the future. saves all the messing around next time.