Automotive Restoration Digital Photography Tools
I've been playing with classic cars since sometime round my fourteenth birthday. There was a time when my memory was sufficient to aid me putting back together the intricate components that I pulled out from the depth of the gearbox, or harder still, remembered which electrical wire to connect where...
These days I an a cheat. I have bought a digital camera. Its the easy way of remembering everything, and for free. I don't have any fancy kit, just a 100 basic compact camera, with enough memory to take a couple of hundred photos at a time. Almost everything I dismember now gets photoed as it comes apart, then the pictures are filed in a folder with a date, and what they are pictures of. Come the time for reassembly, the pictures get dug out again, and checked through.
Pictures really come into their own when you suffer from unexpected delays. I remember taking one of my first projects to pieces anticipating it would be back on the road in three months. Some three years, a job change, and a house move later, and it was finally time to start rounding up all the little bits and pieces and get round to finishing it off.
Practically, so that your photos are useful, its worth taking some care when you take them. Often in workshops lighting is poor. Using the flash with metal components often gives unwanted reflections that leave the subject of the photo unclear. Taking photos without flash gives unwanted camera shake. I now have a little plastic mini tripod. Its only about as tall as a Biro, and cost me a few pence, but it means that I can have the camera sat steady for almost all photos.If possible take photos outside - the natural light will always be better.
One tool thats worth investigating is your camera's closeup function. Its often indicated by a little flower image on a button on the camera. Once into closeup mode, the camera adjusts its focus for objects that are a few inches from the lens, rather than whole landscapes. That can be really handy while taking photos say of details of the dash, or recording how the timing chain tensioner is set.
Finally, once your project is over, go through and pick a selection of the more interesting photos - get them printed and in an album, and you have a great record of the work your car has had done to go with its history.
