Steve asked me to join him for a photo shoot at the Newport Car Museum studio a week ago Sunday. It was a very nice offer and I slowly climbed to the second floor that morning. He was already at work photographing a 1956 Porsche 356A Speedster 1600. It has been a rich learning experience in several dimensions and I will share those here in this article.
Click on the images to see them larger, uncropped, and read their titles.
Studio Layout
To photograph cars you need a large space. The studio at the museum was a large room with white walls and floors and a 20′ x 20′ diffuser below six strong LED lights. The lights were fixed in a 3 x 2 layout about 20′ above the ground. The diffusing sheet did a decent job of softening the light but the cars still reflected the patterns formed on them by the lights above. The car stood on a turntable, making changing its angle easy. In the photograph on the left, you can see the turntable and the white surroundings. No, the wires are not always that visible!
Equipment
Steve’s gear was on a studio stand with a central column, with his laptop on one side and the camera on the other. He easily lowered or raised the camera for nice angles. I set up my camera on my tripod positioned behind him and to one side. The challenge was to get lights with minimal or no unwanted reflections. I held a black cardboard for detail shots to minimize the reflection, even eliminate it. We tried turning down, even off some lights and found that it helped with some of the reflections. I later suggested Steve rotate the car on the turntable and adjust his camera position to see if that reduced the reflections.
Speaking of reflections I should say some level of reflection is necessary to provide form and shape to the car by highlighting the high and low points depending on the angle of the lights. But the shine can be so strong as to eliminate any sense of surface. I tackled that in the previous article using the Photoshop Blend If tool.
Up Close, Hand-Held
After photographing it from different angles, we moved closer to the car. The vintage Porsche offered sufficient detail inside and outside from its logo on the hood to its elegantly simple rear-view mirror setup behind the windshield. The challenge was to hold the cameras steady to get sharp images. Higher ISO helped by allowing higher shutter speeds. Still, holding the camera steady was a challenge for both of us.
I was tired and decided to return home after spending a few enjoyable hours with Steve in the museum photo studio. Steve helped me downstairs and I returned home. Thank you, Steve!
Post Processing, Lightroom, Photoshop
When I returned home, I imported all the photos from the session into Lightroom. The challenge of shooting a white car against a white background became more apparent as I viewed the images. The far side of the Porsche was always tonally very close to the background, and as I later found out, that made selecting the car and masking it less precise. As I went through the images, I processed some in Lightroom, some in Photoshop, and some started in Lightroom and ended up in Photoshop.
I experimented with white backgrounds as they were taken. I then made darker neutral, cool blue, and warm tobacco backgrounds. For this almost white car, the darker backgrounds made it stand out better. I edited the following photographs in Photoshop and created the different backgrounds although the capture was with a white background.



As I selected the subject in Lightroom masks and cleaned it up, I duplicated and inverted that selection for the background. Although I thought they looked fine, I later realized that the soft edge formed by the fender or the hood against the white background resulted in very poor-looking edges. I inadvertently complicated the process by not paying enough attention to the fine details and applied some edits to each mask.
Fixing the subject selection, the car, required corresponding changes to the background. Making them smoothly sit against each other proved too complex and time-consuming. This was particularly problematic if the image was pushed to Photoshop and further edited there. The lesson: Check the Lightroom masks carefully before using them as bases for derivative masks. See the messy transition from the car to the wall behind it in the image on the left. Yes, part of it may be due to the noise in the capture.
Editing the images, and making and refining selections in Photoshop proved more capable and refined. I did not even resort to using vector selections which can be extremely precise and the edges can be softened with equal precision to fit the need. If I ever need to print any of these images, I will make sure the selections are made in Photoshop, possibly using vector selections. Steve’s images will be much cleaner as he was shooting to have the museum print them in large sizes. I did not remove most of the reflections from the car’s surface.
The Studio Session Photographs
The following frames were either edited in Lightroom or partly edited in Lightroom and finished in Photoshop. As I said earlier if I ever need to print these images I will most likely edit them again with carefully selected masks. Also worth noting is that they were all shot on a tripod.







I had additional fun with the elegant lines on the hood and the side, and making it zoom!



Some details like the break-lights were amazingly simple compared to those on today’s cars. The hood handle had the colorful logo embedded at one end and in the rear, the tailpipes glowed.





The dashboard, steering wheel, and instruments were simple and elegant. Pay attention to the rearview mirror on the dashboard, and note the chrome handle on the passenger side. Finally, look under the hood with a spare tire, and the powerful but simple engine in the back.






Conclusions
I have not photographed cars under carefully constructed studio conditions. Photographing them as a visitor to a car museum has many escape hatches. “There are too many lights,” “people are all around,” “I cannot get a good angle,” … I will share my lessons in case you find yourself in a similar situation. If I return for another session with Steve, I will certainly follow the following advice.
While Shooting
- When possible, use tethered shooting with live view on the laptop. Steve’s camera was tethered but only to copy the image to the laptop to see it. Canon Camera Connect shows the image on the laptop screen, allows adjusting the shutter speed, and f-stop while watching the big picture.
- Whenever possible, use a tripod, especially if you have shaky hands like me
- Shoot at a lower ISO, I used ISO 800 which may have resulted in slight but interfering noise in the images.
- Use a ColorChecker Passport or a gray card to get an accurate color of the car. I had one with me but did not use it, I should have.
- Try rotating the car and changing the camera position to find a better lighting control since the lights are fixed.
- If possible, lower the edge of the diffusing screen closer to the camera, thus making the light spots bigger with a slightly different angle.
- Consider bracketing the exposure and see if HDR processing them may help with the reflections. The multiple frames may also be used in Photoshop with masking to have control of the reflections.
In Post Processing
- If you suspect noise interference, use Lightroom’s “Enhance” feature and create a de-noised DNG copy. The following 100% crops from the masks extracted in Photoshop from the original and its de-noised copy show the difference. Click to see them larger.
- If you create a mask in Lightroom and plan to derive other masks from it, inspect it at 100-200% zoom levels and correct the problems; otherwise, derivative masks will have the same problem but inversed.
- When possible create and refine the masks in Photoshop. First, it has more and better masking tools. Second, every correction to the mask does not remain as a separate entity. I found making corrections to those separate entities more complex than I thought. See the mask layer screen captures below.
- Some reflections can be removed by cloning. That is best done in Photoshop but Lightroom may also do an acceptable job on smaller blemishes.
- On larger reflections consider using the method I explained in the previous article. It is easy and effective.
- If you change the background color, don’t forget to mask the windshield and add a hue similar to the background.
Remember that many of the points mentioned here also apply to your next desktop studio photo shoot.
jackie
Great photos! I am happy you guys got to have this “car party.”
A. Cemal Ekin
Thanks, Jackie, I could only last a couple of hours before getting tired. But had lots of fun.
Take care,
Cemal
Haluk Atamal
Very interesting article on a very difficult subject. Kudos for your careful inspections and meticulous detailing. Taking studio photos of cars is one of the most demanding tasks.
Many thanks for sharing the experience Cemal.
Rgds, Haluk
A. Cemal Ekin
Demanding is an understatement, Haluk. I may make a second attempt with my notes on lessons learned. If I manage to go again, I will try to coincide it with a darker color car shoot!!
Take care,
Cemal
Paul White
You had a great day shooting with Steve. The problems of capturing images of a white car on a white background is challenging. You detailed explanations are great. I appreciate that you as well as I cannot work with a camera for long hours.
A. Cemal Ekin
Only a few hours, Paul, but I enjoyed it very much. And, you are right, there are limits to what I, and apparently you can do. Easy does it!
Cemal
Stephen C. Szydlowski
Cemal,
I enjoyed our time in the studio making images of a wonderful old classic Porsche. White on white is tough. Hopefully the next one will be more colorful. Theres a yellow 911 in the museum that needs to be photographed. The article was full of great info on shooting cars and post work.
Cheers,
Steve
A. Cemal Ekin
Good to have your words, Steve. You were the facilitator of this shoot, thank you. I look forward to another session and I will be more prepared to do what I originally planned to do but got carried away. Thanks for stopping by,
Cemal