ebr898

I do not know if my skin is thick enough, but I am going to ask for help.
From lurking and then participating in the C&V forum, I have noticed that we all seem to be very visual people therefore we “eat up” the treads with nice pictues. I know I have seen some very good photos of bicyles here. So I come to ask the forum for suggestions, tips etc regarding photogaphing bicycles. I became aware of my inablity to take good photos on the before and after thead. ( I tried to deny that its my falt. I was blaming it on the point and shoot digital camera) After taking these photos for an auction site, I relized my best efforts fall short. Please help ( there were more photos but they were pretty bad)

ronp6

Nice Holdsworth. I have a 1982 NRecord that is very similar.

It is very hard to do indoor photography with only the single on camera flash. The flash is quite harsh and you have controlled your shadows reasonably well but a studio shot would be with a light defuser on the flash and back lighting for the background. You could try slow flash on your camera but it looks like you found that on one of them. Outdoors on a cloudy day is much easier and you get more saturation than on sunny days. Yes you do get more saturation in the rain to save and unnecessry comment.

As to composition think about what story you need or want to tell. What makes this frame special?

For me I ride and fix bikes and I do photography for fun but never think about bicycle photos much so my posed pictures suck.

marengo

Well for starters, unless you have a lighting rig it helps to take your pictures outside on an overcast day.

mparker326

Use your camera's macrofocus on closeups.

ebr898

I am trying the cameras macro ablity now. It is an older HP 620 and only has menu for telephoto. But I just got a decent photo of my daughters ear.

lotek 

I personally think the "artsy" weird angled photo's don't do well to convey
a bikes personality, or what it actually looks like. I tend to spend more time
on the composition, trying to get a feel for it than actually looking at the bike (or frame)
i.e. this picture:

The closeup of the rear dropouts is near perfect, gives a good impression of the bike, it's use etc.

btw you don't need thick skin for this forum, we tend to be more "supportive" and warm and fuzzy
than harsh.

marty

Little Darwin

Other than a couple that were obviously blurry, and the last one that lacked detail, I think you did pretty well.

The good shots are at least as good as my best, but I would make a couple of suggestions:

I would rotate a few of the pictures so the viewer doesn't have to tilt their head.

Use a macro setting for close-ups (as someone else mentioned)

Use a tripod (I use a cheap one when I remember, and it helps a lot)

And most importantly, remember that with digital photography it doesn't cost you anything to take more pictures... take many and delete the ones that don't turn out. With practice you will figure out what works, and be able to reduce the number of shots before you get a good one.

One more suggestion I have discovered in using my point and shoot camera...If your camera has a way to help you precisely find the center, take a couple of pictures with a different aspect of the shot in the center. For example, take a shot with the background at the central point, and another where the frame is. Depending on the differences between the items centered (where the camera makes its decisions on exposure), these can provide very different results.

For example, I was taking pictures of a house I am buying and the differences between shots was amazing, just by pointing at the white siding of the house and the green bush in front of it changed the exposure a lot. I have found the general rule is that if the picture is too light point at something light, and point at something dark if the picture is too dark.

EDIT: Also, I don't worry too much about keeping the subject (bike) centered, you can do this by cropping later.

ebr898

Cool, ideas everyone.
Little Darwin- I have more than a few tripods around ( The Nikon 35mm equipment I used to hobby with is stored in basement). The concept of changing the exposure by tricking the camera's "brain" is brilliant. I look forward to trying this.

Pompiere

On many cameras, if you use this technique to fool the exposure, you can hold that exposure by pressing the shutter button halfway down, then center your subject and take the picture.

ollo_ollo

The "Macro" or close-up on your camera may only be labeled with a symbol. On mine, it is a stylized flower, looks like a tulip. My close-up pictures improved greatly when I started using this feature.

nlerner

This one's my favorite:



Nice job of Campy dropout in the foreground being in focus and the one in the rear slightly out of focus. Good contrast with the background.

I'm by no means close to a decent bike photographer, but my shots have improved with the use of a tripod, by never using the built-in flash, by using the close-up macro as others have said, and by not trying to capture an entire bike or frame in a single shot. Closer is almost always better if one is trying to show the features of a frame or bike.

Neal

Lamplight

As already stated, the best and easiest lighting you'll find is outside on an overcast day. Clouds act as a natural diffuser, which give you lots of soft light. Your outdoor shots are good, although the last one isn't close enough to show much of the frame's detail. Indoors you need lots of light from more than one direction, and a tripod. When mounted on a tripod, you can use your camera's timer if you find that you're shaking the camera when pressing the shutter (I've ruined many pictures that way!) As others have said, play around with the macro feature on your camera. The shot of the dropout is just right. Or, if your camera takes large enough pictures, you can get fairly close to what you're photographing and simply crop the shot on your computer to "get closer". With many cameras being well over 4 megapixels these days, this is usually not a problem. Just keep trying and take lots of pictures. Your shots are already 100 times better than nearly all of the pictures I see on Craigslist!