White car photography question

It's all about contrast ratio and the capture ability of the medium you're trying to record
on. That's what Ansel Adams was about - fitting 10 Zones (his definition) of light ratio
into film. Our eyes see a ratio of up to 1000:1 - film (and digital) can capture at most
10:1 - that ratio must be compressed from the real world to the medium of recording.
How? Good lighting - keep the ratio 'bland' by the eye, but extreme on the medium.
Very difficult challenge - Adams was the best at this using PlusX Kodak film - not sure
if it's all that possible in the digital age. In the film world, it was done by basing exposure
on 'perfect black' and 'perfect white' in the scene, and then processing the film accordingly
to squeeze that 1000:1 down to 10:1. In digital, I haven't a clue how this is done...

Jed (LONG time Zone System guy from the 80s)

 

Good question. Bit of a trick to get this one right. Trouble is that theres only so much range of light that can come into the camera and be captured by the sensor. Black cars are the same way, but in the reverse, dark car turns out very dark while surroundings look fine, white cars look washed out, etc. Best way I find is to get an exposer lock.

There are a couple ways of doing this, but the most common way is to: Fill the frame with a medium tone of the car (move up close and get all of that white in your frame) then push the shutter down halfway. On most cameras this will get the exposer correct for that one tone of white/black. Then move back to frame the picture as you really want it (get the whole car, or whatever you want in the shot) and push the shutter all the way down. This will make the car look normal, or better anyway, and the rest will be darker/lighter depending on the car colour.

Another way is with a "AEL" button that you can press down that locks the exposer, but most cameras don't have one of those.

Hope that works, & happy shooting!

 

This is the definitive "problem" with solid color cars, especially white. White is a "dead" color, meaning compound curves and surfaces do not "read" well under general lighting. That's why most show cars and styling studies are presented in metallic colors, especially silver. With white you need to make the light (or rather the absence of it) work for you. You need to position the car or wait for the right sun angle so as to produce shadows or grey values in enough strategic areas of the coachwork to model the surface of the body. Sometimes you can use reflections to accomplish the same end, but that's much more difficult with white, and you will need to experiment with aperture and exposure to derive benefit.