The Photography Discussion Thread

[Sauc3]

Ok a good place to ask for stuff like this I reckon. I'll be heading to see the Toronto Autoshow again this year, and my past results there are a mixed bag I think in terms of pic quality....I am wonder whats a good setup to shoot at a car show, in terms of lenses, flash and how to use it properly. I am assuming most goes to a show only shoot with a single flash setup, how do you make the best use of it, and are there any way to lessen the effect of the multiple surrounding lights reflecting off the car's paintwork?

Last year I went to the motorshow here 7 or so times, and tried both the basic camera/flash and camera/tripod/flash setup. If you have some time go for the tripod, in my eyes I got much better shots by using it. Definitely bring as much space as possible, I have 7gb in cards, and could still probably fill that up if I did my best.

[Manik]

Just a quick question...

What do you guys do with your photos once you pull them off of your camera. I'm talking about the good ones worth keeping, I know that many of them get edited, but what about the just the average to good ones. How do you catagorize them? At the moment I'm just putting photos in folders which are date named, but its starting to get complicated pretty fast as well as awkward to track back and find certain shots.

What do you guys do?

[dydzi]

^ categorize it in folders by years, then by events. i have also a different folder "creme de la creme", inspired by rebirth of xar's (a member that doesn't visit ucp nowadays) scf site

[2ndclasscitizen]

I have few folders of different categories (Gigs, Rides, Cars etc) then I put each shoot into it's own dated folder, eg Cotter Ride 1-1-08.

[Manik]

^ categorize it in folders by years, then by events. i have also a different folder "creme de la creme", inspired by rebirth of xar's (a member that doesn't visit ucp nowadays) scf site

In the creme de la creme folder do you just put your best shots in there or something?

@2ndclasscitizen that sounds like a good idea as well, making things more manageable.

lol, I'll probably end up just organizing it by year than to month than by date for folder names. Based on the fact that a fair bit of my pictures aren't taken at events.

[henk4]

In the creme de la creme folder do you just put your best shots in there or something?

@2ndclasscitizen that sounds like a good idea as well, making things more manageable.

lol, I'll probably end up just organizing it by year than to month than by date for folder names. Based on the fact that a fair bit of my pictures aren't taken at events.

my folder system is based first on make of the car, than broken down into individual type and if possible by chassis number. As the dates of the pictures are always included in the properties it is relatively easy to trace the event where the shot was taken.

[NSXType-R]

My cousin uses Picasa to organize his photos. It just breaks it down into years.

I don't know if its worth using Picasa though. I haven't tried it myself.

I don't take much pictures of cars, although I organize everything by the event I took the pictures at.

[zeppelin]

I, personally, put each day's worth of photos into a folder titled with the date they were taken.

ex.
(2008.02.15) toronto shots
(2008.02.20) autoshow shots

Naming it with the date numerically like that keeps them all chronologically ordered, assuming you've set your folders to sort by name. Then I just write what the shots are of following the date. It's pretty much the best method, and I'm patenting it.

[henk4]

I, personally, put each day's worth of photos into a folder titled with the date they were taken.

ex.
(2008.02.15) toronto shots
(2008.02.20) autoshow shots

Naming it with the date numerically like that keeps them all chronologically ordered, assuming you've set your folders to sort by name. Then I just write what the shots are of following the date. It's pretty much the best method, and I'm patenting it.

sure, but if you are looking for a specific car that you may have shot two or three years ago, how would you trace it?

[dydzi]

sure, but if you are looking for a specific car that you may have shot two or three years ago, how would you trace it?

so thus i have different folders for events and different for cars that i'm interested in - maybe takes a little bit more space, but that's not wrong still with me

[kvisser]

I used to use iPhoto and spent countless hours managing my images. I had 40,000 images in there and then the bastard currupted. I nearly cried. I now rely on Adobe Bridge to rename my files. Then I can search thru my 400 gigs of images and find anything quickly. Its a matter of creating short specific naming conventions.

I shoot many cars so I've come to categorize them with 2 letter codes.
ex = exotic
cc = classic car
hr = hot rod
mc = muscle car
rr = rat rod

dd ex ferrari 550 blue 01 = Dunken donuts exotic ferrari 550 blue 01
and so on
I also tend to come up with naming conventions for event
ai07 = Amelia Island concours 07

I find that going thru the pictures and renaming them quickly forces me to get rid of the crap quickly and deal with the images, otherwise I end up with 50 gigs of images to deal with, weeks if not months later.

I then create 3 folders
1969 Jaguar E type Org (original) these are now all raw files
1969 Jaguar E type HR (High res) these are jpgs
1969 Jaguar E type LR ) (low res) - I add a lr to the end of all low res pictures so they can be quickly sorted out. I use these pictures for posting and sharing.

my 2 cents

ken

for family picts I use fam then break out with abreviated names of the kids

[pat_ernzen]

I just have them in the folders they come off my card in. Like, "564CANON", "565CANON", etc... So basically, no organization. However, all the exported shots are exported into folders based on the name of the event and the date. I never change filenames, so if I need to get back to the original RAWs, I just look at the file name and I know it could only be a handful of folders.

[zeppelin]

sure, but if you are looking for a specific car that you may have shot two or three years ago, how would you trace it?

I only organize my personal shots like that. For car pictures that aren't mine, I have it all organized in folders by Make > Year > Model. As for my own shots, I remember generally when it was taken.

[henk4]

I only organize my personal shots like that. For car pictures that aren't mine, I have it all organized in folders by Make > Year > Model. As for my own shots, I remember generally when it was taken.

Problem I would have is that I have only personal shots (about 70,000), and I am not interested in shots of cars made by other people.

[zeppelin]

Problem I would have is that I have only personal shots (about 70,000), and I am not interested in shots of cars made by other people.

Yeah fair enough. I needn't worry about that (yet) because I lost all my photos pre-2007 due to Windows' incompetence. So I have very few photographs.