How are car photos made sharp when the car is moving toward the camera but the background is blurred?
Asked 8/15/2013
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I’ve seen car images where the vehicle appears sharp while the background shows strong motion blur, even though the car seems to be coming toward the camera. If you pan with the car, it seems like the car itself should blur too. Are shots like this done in-camera, or are they usually created with CGI or heavy Photoshop?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
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Photos kind of similar to this can be achieved using a tracking shot where the photograph is taken from a car in front of the car being photographed, however in this particular case the answer is CG and/or heavy Photoshop. Particularly for the second image, there is no way to viably get that shot sharp without having the background also sharp.
On the first, it might be possible to get something close with a tracking shot, but the radial nature of the blur on the inside seems improbable and it seems like the entire thing may well be CG based on the coloring and texture.
It is also possible that they took a photo where everything was sharp and then they added the blur with Photoshop and greatly increased the contrast and colorized it in a surreal manner, but it feels much more CG oriented.
Also, to clarify, this has nothing to do with panning. That is motion blur. Panning is when you turn the camera along the horizontal axis. This has nothing to do with that. Tracking is the correct term since the moving subject is tracked with the camera and in this case the camera would have to be moving (which is typical of many tracking shots, but not always a condition of them.)
Originally by user11392. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user11392
13y ago
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Shots like this are usually called tracking shots. A real version is made by photographing the car from another moving vehicle traveling at the same speed and direction, or by mounting the camera to the subject car with a boom and removing the rig later in post. That keeps the car relatively sharp while the background blurs from motion.
For images where the blur appears strongly radial toward the camera, especially if the car remains unrealistically sharp, the result is often not purely in-camera. Based on the community answers, the examples you saw are likely CGI and/or heavily edited in Photoshop. One clue mentioned is that some details, such as shadows and the nature of the blur, don’t look physically plausible for a straight photograph.
So: similar images can be made with real tracking techniques, but the specific examples are probably computer-generated or significantly altered afterward.
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