1956 T-Bird

[xxxsnookxxx]

Hello was driving down the street saw this car parked on the side of the road doubled back and got some pictures. nikon d7000 18-105mm f/4.5 iso 200 1/400s. do you think it would be better if the background was more blurred?if so my aperture was as low a setting as possible would i achieve this with longer exposure? and could you do that with out tripod?At what shutter speeds do you start to need a tripod?learning alot here thank you.......

[JFSanders]

Looks like your focal length was at 18mm or so as the DOF at that setting would give you about 60feet of focus if you were about 5 to 10 feet from the car. So to blur the background you would have to go up to about 35mm at F/4.5 and your DOF drops to about 12 feet. Car sharp and background blurred. You could handhold without shake down to about 1/focal length until you get to 1/60 if your technique is good. You might have to dial in some negative ev about 1 to 1.5 to get your exposure. Experimentation is the key here. You have to learn what your camera does at the settings you set. Shoot, chimp, adjust, shoot again.

I ran a Gaussian blur over the whole photo and erased the car back to sharp. Did a brightness control point on the road to lower it so that it doesn't distract the eye and then ran high pass filter and adjusted the luminance until it looked good to me.

Here is the edit:

Jim

[xxxsnookxxx]

thanks for the answers still new to photography was my second day with the camera and im learning lots thanks to helpful people like you and this web site....the image you edited was what i was hoping to get, i think it adds a sense of motion.next time ill try the settings you suggested thank you...Roger

[windrider86]

Looks like you were standing when you took the photo. Kneel down and you'll see a hug improvement in your composition.
Also, unless your background is plain, try taking your photo of just a portion of the car. That will leave your subject as the main focal point without any distractions

[xxxsnookxxx]

good advice...but im 6'5" i was as low as i go without laying down.... gonna take the camera out now for its third photo outing ill see what i can come up have read and learned alot in the last day or two ill see what i can come up with and post later thanks again.also found a bogen tripod on craigslist gonna go check it out tommorrow.

[windrider86]

So if you kneel down you're still taller than the car?

[ArmySoldier777]

At 6'5" taking a knee, that does look about the right height. Sometimes I'm glad I'm only 5'11". But I've had friends over 6' that have the same issue with getting down low to really get a good composure for those shots lol. One of them use to just set the camera on his knee and use the live view screen to compose the shot so he could get it as low as he wanted it to be