If you are a car dealer and need to take some pictures of your stock, or you are looking to sell your family car in order to buy a newer model, then hopefully this guide will help you. You don’t need to be a professional photographer, nor do you have to own a flashy expensive camera and tripod to make your car look good.

You can buy a perfectly good camera for around £120 rather than splashing out on a model with all the bells and whistles attached. It is not the camera that makes the car look good, it is the way you use it.

The first piece of advice is that you should always photograph your cars in a designated area. If all of your stock is photographed in the same setting, then you will have some consistency which your potential buyers will appreciate. Firstly you need to make sure you can always park your car there and be sure that the designated area will have the sun shining on it (but not in front of you) for most of the day. You should also ensure that there aren’t any unwanted items in shot.

You should leave some sort of marker on the floor which will enable you to ensure that you are always parking your car in exactly the same spot.

The first thing to ensure once you have switched your camera on is that you get the zoom right. I would advise that you set it to max optical, and walk away from the car until the car fills the screen. You do not want a picture with plenty of background and a tiny car.

You should always remove the price when taking photographs of your cars. If you don’t and then you decide to change the price, you are going to need to take a brand new set of pictures.

With regards to the quality setting on your camera, you should set it to around 1 or 2 million pixels depending on the camera. Then you should switch OFF the flash and ensure that when you are taking the front and rear ¾ shots, the camera is on max optical zoom.

So, you are all set up, here is a list of the photographs you should be looking to take…

Photo 1 – Front 3/4 shot
Camera set to max optical zoom. This is the photo that we think shows the car off to its best. If you turn the steering wheel 1 turn it shows off the wheels really well.

Photo 2 – Front shot
Straighten the steering wheel, take shot from the front of the car.

Photo 3 – Interior shot
Raise the height of the tripod and set the zoom on the camera to the widest angle setting so you can get as much information in the photo.

Photos 4 and 7 – Side shots
Now turn the car around and park in the same place Take this from the middle of the car, set the zoom on the camera so that the car is filling the frame.

Photo 5 – Rear 3/4 shot
Use the same mark on the ground as you did for the first photo, max zoom on camera.

Photo 6 – Rear shot
Go to the middle of the back of the car and take the shot, this shows off rear spoilers, exhausts and so on.

Photos 8-20 – Feature shots
These can be of attractive or unique parts of the car, such as the wheels, badges or further interior shots.

For more information on taking photos of cars head on over to the Spidersnet Facebook page.