Bike photography advice?

[Panter]

As in taking photo's of a bike or frame, rather than taking photo's from the bike

I find them immensley difficult things to take good pictures of, presumably because they're quite big but there's so little of them, if that makes sense.

Any tips?

 

[MajorMantra]

-Clean, uncluttered background.
-Don't photograph in direct sunlight - shade is much better.
-If indoors, don't use direct flash. Unless you know what you're doing with lighting then stick to available light.
-If your background is white, use exposure compensation to correct for under-exposure and make sure the camera is focusing where you want it to.
-Learn about white balance so you don't get weird colour casts.

There are a few shots on my Flickr. Note that I've broken the first rule in a few of them.

Matthew

 

[topcat1]

mm those cat pics are great.

 

[MajorMantra]

mm those cat pics are great.

Cheers!

Matthew

 

[Campfire]

Beautiful cats! Beautiful pics all round - I love the pics of the Leica III!

 

[peanut]

I think the secret is to take several close up shots as MM has done. trying to take a picture of an entire frame is a waste of time as there is too little detail to tell you anything other than the colour really.

If you use google's Picassa for importing and editing your pictures it has an excellent simple photo editing feature that allows you to crop out everything that is not essential to the picture . (be ruthless)
also you can lighten the image which is usually required as the camera reads the light of the predominant background not the frame

Nice shots by the way MM

 

[Will1985]

Photos should be taken from the drive side
Chain on the big ring and one of the smaller sprockets
Cranks should follow the line of one of the tubes (ie: RH crank points down as a continuation of the seat tube).
Pedals should be vertical.

 

[GrasB]

Whole bike/frame shots usually don't work that well in an artistic sense unless they're accompanied by good detail shots. For good detail shots try to be a little inventive in your shot placement and angle. If you've got a camera with aperture priority you can play really interesting games with depth of field too. It all comes down to practice however, the more you do the better you become if constantly critique your own work.

If you want to do this regularly & do a lot of photography in general it may be worth going on a half day workshop, still life photography would be your target subject. The ones I've gone on give you a really good grounding on the composition rules of photography in your chosen subject, once you know those rules well you understand why you do things (which includes breaking the said rules in a conscious manner).

 

[Panter]

Thanks all, I'll give that a try

I'd love to do a workshop but just never seem to have the time. Maybe I should make time......

 

[snakehips]

..... or you could stick them up on a table in the back garden , in sunlight , with a load of foliage behind !

Snake

Snakehips Bikes

 

[Panter]

I like your style

 

[Jonathan M]

When I have sold bikes or frames, I've usually done one pic of the whole set up, then others of detail, so components fitted, head tube badge, any frame decals identifying the frame tubing etc. It would be the same sort of thing for photographic records for insurance purposes. If you are doing pics for that, don't forget to use the macro setting and get some pics of the frame number and any unique identifiers.

 

[MajorMantra]

Beautiful cats! Beautiful pics all round - I love the pics of the Leica III!

Nice shots by the way MM

Cheers.

I'd love to do a workshop but just never seem to have the time. Maybe I should make time......

In some ways the most enjoyable way to learn about photography (and the way I got really interested) is to use a camera with proper manual controls. Any DSLR and some of the better compacts will offer this.

That way you can fully get to grips with ISO, aperture and shutter speed and learn what works for every situation. I also love shooting film but for easy learning digital is fantastic because you can take thousands of shots without wasting resources.

You don't need the latest and greatest either. Almost all of the digital shots on my Flickr were taken with a 6MP Pentax DSLR (APS-C sized sensor) that came out 4 or 5 years ago.

Matthew

 

[Panter]

To be honest my camera is one of the problems.

Years ago I had a Nikon F65. It took fantastic shots, I just had to select one of the programmed modes and the camera would do all the rest.

When I finally, and very begrudgingly, gave in to the digital revolution I wanted something a bit more sophisticated so that I could really learn photography, so I bought a Nikon D100.
Sadly, I've never had the time to really play with it and jsut don't get the best out of it. If I'd bought a slightly more basic model I'd have been far better off.
It's a semioprofessional and I'm sure it's capable of amazing pictures, but you have to know what you're doing with it, and I just don't.

 

[GrasB]

Okay then, I'll change my course recommendation. Get your self on a dSLR tuition course. dSLRs, especially early ones, have awful auto mods as they're designed to give the user the control to do things. I personally never use auto mode, it's either aperture priority or fully manual & normally I'm shooting in raw mode then using Adobe Light Room to develop the raw photo.

I have 2 D70s & love them to bits. One thing to watch out for with the Nikons is that you get 85% frame coverage with the view finder so try not to frame to wide. What lens have you got btw?