Camera maketh the Car?

Anything can be made to look better with a decent shot of it. Post production also helps.

An ugly car can be made to look cool if you find the right 'angle', and a decent car look terrible at the wrong angle too.

It's all perception.

if you crouch down and take a photo close to the ground it will look way better than when standing up right and looking down.

in short its the composition and the like which makes a good photo, the camera is fairly irrelevant in alot of ways

As said above, choice of composition is always going dictate how good a photo ends up looking. No amount of photoshop can compensate for a well taken shot.

Angle, lighting, depth of field, focus....as well as many other factors make up a photo.

The 'more successful' photos look good because of the angle they were taken, the use of 'thirds' where the subject is not in the centre of the shot (subject in the centre can make a photo look bland and ordinary - almost 'background')

The nice blue sky also helps in the first two shots and gives good shadows which adds contrast/enhances detail. The first two also have the contrast increased (photoshop) and quite possibly the saturation too. Increasing the contrast will make the object appear more 'solid' and details become more striking. Saturation gives the blues a much richer look.

I would also guess that the first two have also been sharpened somewhat...not a bad thing at all - I like sharpened images when it comes to cars, you get to admore the details so much better.

In amswer to your question, yes, technology does play a large part in the amazing photos you see these days. This is not down to fancy high mega pixel camera's though - large megapixels only mean you can print images larger without losing detail. All of the above shots could have been taken with an ordinary point & shoot camera or a 35mm film camera.

It's the way the shot is taken (good photography) and what is done with it after that gives the results you are talking about.

I love my DSLR camera even though I am not really that used to using it yet....but wouldn't give up my little cheapy point and shoot for anything! Some of my best shots were taken with my cheap 'disposable' little sony camera!

I know these aren't exactly 'great' shots, but these were taken with my little point & shoot with 1 megapixel (a LONG time before I'd ever touched an SLR) and have had NO photoshopping....straight off the camera....





I was pleased with them anyway ;D

There's a fair difference between that first set of shots alright, still a cool car either way but the first two pics defo give it a better look. I think the comparison between them and glossy mag photos is good too. I reckon that the camera does matter but like any photo the person behind the camera/computer counts too. Give me a flashy camera and i couldn't take a fantastic pic! I have a plastic Diana+ camera that is a very basic camera taking pics on old 110 medium format film (yes that's right ***ROLLS OF FILM**** kids) but even t makes for much cooler pics:

Digital Camera:





Diana+

The secret makign it look low is to actually run your car that low. Mine is nothing special but it looks much lower than most other Anglias because... you guessed... mine is the lowest

Photos make the paint shinier and hide all the chips on the wheels though, no doubt about that.

Though with some post-processing it's possible to achieve that "Taken in 1951" look. I'm by far a potatochop buff but that was kinda easy to generate.

The second picture has a better backdrop.