Now primariy I’m a Portrait Photographer however this past few weeks, for the fun of it, I’ve been experimenting with my iPhone to see how it would fare when taking pictures of my car … both still and moving.

So a few weekends back I met up with friends in South Wales and headed to Crickhowell; an area I’ve photographed in before when working on this Harley image …

Man in a red checked shirt on a motorbike beside a winding road

kit used

For these car photographs I was using my iPhone 15 Pro Max along with …

Polar Pro iPhone Case
67mm Filter Adaptor + 67mm Circular Polarising Filter
ReeFlex Pro Camera App

CHECK OUT THESE ITEMS ON MY GEAR PAGE

The circular polariser is the car photographers secret weapon because of how effective it is in reducing / removing reflections in the car windows and on the bodywork …

Blue hatchback photographed with and without a circular polarising filter, side by side

I used the ReeFlex Pro Camera App purely so that I could use shutter speed and ISO to lock in the exposure that I wanted.

Here’s the ‘out of camera’ result …

Blue hatchback parked by a road in open moorland under a cloudy sky

Here’s the final retouched image which was done using Lightroom Desktop.

I also added a long exposure effect to the clouds using a technique in Photoshop which works really well however now I want to do the shoot again and capture it all ‘in camera’ using a long exposure app like ReeXpose or EvenLonger 😃

Blue hatchback on a moorland road under a dramatic, moody sky

I also tried some panning shots and did get some results, however the ratio of keepers to rejects was very low.

I was trying to do this using the ReeFlex App and a Neutral Density Filter on the front of the iPhone so that I could lock in an exposed photographed at 1/30 second. However, the ReeFlex app at the time I did this did NOT have burst mode. This meant I was having to try to capture a single frame as I panned with the car passing at no more than 30 mph.

Here’s an edited result of what I managed to capture …

Blue hatchback on a road through golden moorland

Later having shared this image online I spoke with a friend of mine who is a Professional Car Photographer. It was great to hear that he was impressed with the results expecially considering they were from an iPhone but he also gave me some settings that he and other pro car photographers use to capture a moving car.

My friend told me that moving car shots often see the car travelling at no more than 20 mph and that they also use a shutter speed of around 1/15 sec or 1/20 sec … but ALWAYS shoot in burst mode.

So armed with these settings I set about finding a pro camera app that would allow me to manually dial in the shutter speed but that also had Burst Mode; and the app I turned to was MOMENT.

I’ve yet to use the app in a planned car shoot however when in Germany a couple of weeks back I was waiting for a friend to pick me up and whilst waiting near a fuel station forecourt I attached the Variable Neutral Density Filter to my iPhone using the Polar Pro Case and Adaptor, and set the shutter speed using the MOMENT app.

I then simply took a burst of panning shots of passing cars as they negotiated a roundabout and drove away, which from my position would have meant them travelling around 20 mph.

Here’s some of the results …

Panning shots of cars on a road with motion-blurred backgrounds

So, yeah I’ve been very impressed with how the iPhone has dealt with this and the results I’ve managed to get.

Lots more experimenting and fun to be had!