A Vehicle Product Session: Learning My Way Around A Circular Polarizing Filter.

I have taken quite a few pictures of cars.

Have long been obsessed with cars. From my first vehicle memories of my Father’s Road Runner to me choosing to be an Engineer because cars and beyond. But up until now vehicle photos have been an opportunistic affair. That changed recently. A fellow 100 Men In Black Male Chorus member and his wife requested that I photograph their vehicles for a leasing business they have. My first thoughts?

• Cool.
• I need to get my mitts on a circular polarizing lens filter.

As I understand things the point of a CPL filter (Why the acronym CPL followed by filter?… Wouldn’t CPLF make more… You know what? Nevermind.) is to control refelections. Nice. Binged a few articles/Youtube videos and some indicated that you needed to buy the top of the line CPL filters. Spare no expense. Me? Straight to Amazon and I purchased the recommended Amazon Basics filters for $15-$17. I do not see myself using them enough for a significant investment. Result?

For my purposes, they did just fine.

Most of what I read or watched listed things that were pretty straightforward and I had worked them out already. But one thing the internets did help me with was focal length. Before I started planning things I had thought I would use a wide angle lens close up, but it was clear that wide open spaces and a longer focal length would yield better results.

This immediately became handy when the couple showed me potential locations they were thinking of. I immediately chose the largest space and it worked perfectly. Also requested a step ladder for some high angle pics and it came in very handy.

For gear, I had brought everything… and used exactly one camera and lens. Nearly any camera body would have done with any normal to tele zoom or prime honestly. Product pics like this do not even require AF and any reasonable resolution would do. Depth of field is also something that is not needed, so a humble lens spec would do as well. An 18 year old DSLR and nifty fifty lens I am currently obsessing over would do. Me? Chose to drive in a thumbtack with a sledgehammer, of course. Went with the Sony A7RV and the practical precious.

Every once in a while I forgot about the CPL filter, but when I did remember to put it into use it worked as billed. Field notes:

• Since all refections cannot be canceled out at once some mentioned compositing, but I chose to cancel the most distracting/least pleasing reflections and left the rest.
• Was warned of the CPL filter giving off an unpleasing flat paint look and I definitely saw it and tried to avoid it.
• That is about it.

I am happy to say the customers were well pleased with the results which is what matters most ultimately. Here are samples of the resulting images.

Early CPL test files at the customers home.

Welp. That is a wrap. I had fun and I like the result.

Happy capturing.

-ELW