Step by step shoot the scene

Learn how to perfect the angles and achieve front-to-back sharpness by focus stacking the car

01 find The angle

After setting up the platform for the car and the camera on a tripod, the most important part of the technique here is fine-tuning the camera angle so that everything looks natural. Bringing the camera in as close as possible to the model will make it seem larger.

02 Perfect The height

The camera height is important, as it will dictate the angle at which we see the car. For a natural-looking angle, aim to line the camera height up with the roof. Live View is incredibly handy for studying the scene in detail making small compositional changes like this.

03 lock The exposure

As we’re combining a set of images here, it’s important that exposure stays consistent throughout the shoot, so Manual mode is the best choice of camera setting. After taking a few test shots, we settled at f/11, a shutter speed of 1 sec, and ISO400.

04 make a focus stack

As the car is very close to the camera, depth of field is limited, so we need to use focus-stacking to get it all sharp. This involves taking several shots, adjusting the focus point slightly after each (see box). Try not to nudge the camera position when adjusting the focus.

05 create a story

If you like, you can include people in the scene too. We also wanted to create more of a story to our shot. We decided to go for a 1950’s noir look, so positioned our model beyond the car – first in the distance for a silhouetted figure, then again to the right of the car.

06 shoot The empty scene

The next step is to remove everything from the scene and take another shot, making sure our exposure stays consistent. We can use this frame later to fill in any details obscured by the platform that we might want to include in the finished image.