How can you capture both?

[Ryan Smith]

The sun is setting and it's looking beautiful. For my own eyes, my car is well lit and the sunset looks great. When I take the picture I can't capture it exactly how I see it. Should I use a different metering mode? I tried a few but nothing came out so great. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.sromagazine.com/artwork/nsx1.jpg
The Car looks ok here. Sky is crappy.
F/5.6 ISO 100 Aperature 4 Seconds.

http://www.sromagazine.com/artwork/nsx2.jpg
Sky looks good but the car is gone.
F2.8 ISO 100 1/10th sec.

[Jeremy Hua]

Actually what you are doing is exactly right. Assuming you have a tripod available, you can bracket your camera and take the images into PS to do your corrections. Phi Dong has a good article on this on his site.

http://www.phidong.com/archives/2005/09/combining_expos.php

It's nothing wrong with your camera, digitals just have a poor DR compared to film.

[Austin Langley]

If you shot on a tripod and didn't move the camera, overlay the images in PS and paint in the sky or car that you want using layer masks. Basically you need 2 exposures. One for the car and one for the sky. Composite in PS. The only way to shoot this with no post is either flashes or bounce cards (which probably wouldn't work becuse the lack of light)

[Ryan Smith]

Thanks for the info guys. I knew of that method, HDR but I wasn't sure if that's how people are doing it these days. I though maybe there was some trick to get the camera to see what I see.

I used HDR here
http://www.sromagazine.com/artwork/nsx3.jpg

and Quickmask here:
http://www.sromagazine.com/artwork/nsx4.jpg

[Todd Corzett]

Did you shoot it in RAW? Do you have Photoshop CS2? If you answered yes to both of these questions you need to check-out the HDR stuff! Without RAW/CS2 you can still layer the two images and make masks, etc. to make a composite image. In the location you were shooting I'd try to get more than just two exposures (tripod and autobracketing can make this really easy)... one for the car, one for the sky, one for the trees, and one for the leaves... basically, just bracket a wide range with several shots and you're set. Then the fun part of playing in photoshop!

Edit: Ok, you beat me too it... Personally, I like the masked version more, but that may be because HDR was trying to stretch things too far (I noticed when I did one covering a wide range I got lots of lack of contrast in some areas - like the trees in your shot).

-Todd...

PS - you could also do it in camera with graduated ND filters, etc... but IMO it is easier in post.

[Travis Ingle]

Actually what you are doing is exactly right. Assuming you have a tripod available, you can bracket your camera and take the images into PS to do your corrections. Phi Dong has a good article on this on his site.

http://www.phidong.com/archives/2005/09/combining_expos.php

It's nothing wrong with your camera, digitals just have a poor DR compared to film.

Here is another good article I found on HDR a while back. He discusses using two different tools for this, Photomatix as well as CS2. He also does a good job of explaining a lot of things about Dynamic Range. The article deals with landscapes but he mentions in it that it can work very well with automotive photos in certain conditions.

http://www.naturescapes.net/072006/rh0706_1.htm

[Daniel Buck]

you can do it as an HDR then 'tone map' it back down and squeeze the range, but from my experience the results turn out better if you mask and blend it yourself by hand. This is part of the problem when shooting black cars, it's very hard (and alot of times impossible) to get the sky and the car well exposed in a single exposure with out a grad filter. Look for any of my posts with the black mustang, all of them are two exposures, one for the car, and one for the sky. Sometimes I'll take the sky exposure and lightly brush it into the top of the car because the top of the car would otherwise stand out to bright.

It's quite hard to replicate the kind of dynamic range that you see with your eyes into a photograph, with out making the image look doctored. Don't expect to get great results on the first try, it takes practice. Fortunatly (or unfortunatly! :D ) I own a black car, so I get alot of practice with this, and I have been doing it for years, I know exactly what you are going through. The human eye has incredible DR.

A grad filter will help in some situations, but again from my experience I don't like using them very often because they introduce more flare, especially if the headlights are turned on.

It's nothing wrong with your camera, digitals just have a poor DR compared to film.
I'm not convinced that film has that much more DR than a good digital. I have had the same problem when shooting film.