Taking Pictures of Cars in Bright Sunshine

[Benji]

Direct overhead sunshine is just about the worst kind of light to use in photography for just about everything and that includes automobiles. The areas lit by sunshine will be well lit but the parts in shadow will be quite dark.  If you add your flash to the shot it will affect only the dark areas bringing them up closer to the sun lit areas, but sometimes even adding a flash needs some further help.  In the first shot below I turned the flash on and held the camera as one would normally.  As you can see it didn't really help all that much.  In the second shot I turned the camera upside down.  This places the flash head where it does the most good and raised the exposure on the deck lid up quite nicely.

Ben

[G.B. (All Vinyl Dragon)]

Direct overhead sunshine is just about the worst kind of light to use in photography for just about everything and that includes automobiles. The areas lit by sunshine will be well lit but the parts in shadow will be quite dark.  If you add your flash to the shot it will affect only the dark areas bringing them up closer to the sun lit areas, but sometimes even adding a flash needs some further help.  In the first shot below I turned the flash on and held the camera as one would normally.  As you can see it didn't really help all that much.  In the second shot I turned the camera upside down.  This places the flash head where it does the most good and raised the exposure on the deck lid up quite nicely.

Ben

Good Pictures Ben... Got some more to look at ? I use flash fill for a lot of things. This is a good example...

[dpledger]

Another approach to the problem is the use of a polarizing filter. Light reflected off a smooth surface tends to be strongly polarized, so a filter rotated to a position crossing this direction can greatly reduce the flare from the affected areas. At one time I was working on techniques for auto location of tanks for the military, and built up a sensor which had a rotating polarizing filter. As the filter turned, the pattern of bright spots on the tank would shift around depending on the angle of the component and make them easily identifiable. I found this technique to also be useful in suppressing flares in ordinary photography as well. It seems that years ago such filters were standard items in the photographer's boodle bag, but with the advent of more sophisticated flashes they seem to have been forgotten.

[Benji]

There are several problems with using a polarizing filter outdoors.  First of all it gobbles up about 1 1/2 stops of light thereby effectively reducing the output of the flash by 1 1/2 stops and a polarizer will work only at certain times of the day depending on the location of the light source.  The easiest way to determine if the polarizer will work is to form a "gun" with one hand.  Point your thumb at the light source and whatever the finger is pointing at will be polarized otherwise the filter simply becomes a neutral density filter. 

Another problem is what it does to the sky. If the sky is in the shot only a portion of the sky will be polarized while the rest of it will not be.

Ben Jones - S.F. Photog.  Retired after 30 years as a real professional photographer with a real main street studio and not some GWC.