Is the pic on Tesla's website photo-shopped?

Electricfan · Jun 29, 2015

I'm wondering if its just me, or is there something wrong with this picture? I've taken lots of shots of my car and it never looked like this. Did they photo-shop it so the rear looks bigger?? Just curious. The car in this picture looks great, but I suspect it doesn't physically exist... could be wrong.

Saghost · Jun 29, 2015

I'm thinking the effect you're describing is just a fairly wide angle lens and a relatively low view point - this shot is taken with the lens about the height of the beltline.
Walter

Electricfan · Jun 29, 2015

Saghost said:
I'm thinking the effect you're describing is just a fairly wide angle lens and a relatively low view point - this shot is taken with the lens about the height of the beltline.
Walter

I meant to ask if it could just be a lense - so are you saying the picture is distorted, kind of like when they take a picture of a football stadium and it shows the whole field and both endzones? If so, then the picture is really showing a car that doesn't exist in physical reality exactly as shown. Which is kind of deceptive, although I'm sure its common practice in marketing.

cgiGuy · Jun 29, 2015

Screen Shot 2015-06-29 at 8.31.44 AM.png

Screen Shot 2015-06-29 at 8.34.21 AM.png

deonb · Jun 29, 2015

Subtle barrel distortion

Probably shot with something like a 20mm lens akin to this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fQwAXFNFII

There's a few similar angles in that video, so you can kind'a envision the setup for the above shot based on that.

spottyq · Jun 29, 2015

Electricfan said:
I meant to ask if it could just be a lense - so are you saying the picture is distorted, kind of like when they take a picture of a football stadium and it shows the whole field and both endzones? If so, then the picture is really showing a car that doesn't exist in physical reality exactly as shown. Which is kind of deceptive, although I'm sure its common practice in marketing.

It's not distorted, as in straight lines in reality are still straight on the picture (look at the windows on the buildings in the background.)

The wide angle lens allows the camera to be placed very close the the car, thereby exaggerating the perspective, while still having the whole car in the frame. If you placed your eyes where the camera was, you'd see exactly the same thing. If you placed a camera phone at this place, you'd only see part of the car, but you could perfectly overlay your picture with Tesla's.

Electricfan · Jun 29, 2015

Wow, that's very close! But you're on a driveway, and the ground your car is on is sloped downward. Your front wheels are lower than your rear wheels. In Tesla's picture the car is on level ground.

steph280 · Jun 29, 2015

lens trick. If you get a fisheyes lens you'll get some serious fat rears.

Electricfan · Jun 29, 2015

Attached is the best I could do with my car (please excuse how dirty it is, I just got back from a 3000 mile supercharger trip with almost no problems btw) and haven't had time to wash it. Normally it is very shiney.

I'm convinced the Tesla picture is distorted and doesn't show a car that exists in reality exactly like that. It looks good, and I guess if GM Ford and all the rest do this then Tesla has to do it too.

deonb · Jun 29, 2015

Electricfan said:
Attached is the best I could do with my car (please excuse how dirty it is, I just got back from a 3000 mile supercharger trip with almost no problems btw) and haven't had time to wash it. Normally it is very shiney.

I'm convinced the Tesla picture is distorted and doesn't show a car that exists in reality exactly like that. It looks good, and I guess if GM Ford and all the rest do this then Tesla has to do it too.

All pictures are distorted. You probably don't have a color-calibrated monitor, and controlled lighting conditions, so the colors will never match.

And the camera only have a single lens, instead of the 2 that your eyes have, so perspective is emulated instead of observed. And even if it had 2 lenses, your display isn't holographic.

So all you can really assert is that the picture they took doesn't look the same as the picture you took. But neither of them is really any more "correct" or "incorrect" as compared to the other one.

Even in your own 'correct' camera, the picture you download from the camera isn't anywhere close to what the camera actually saw. The camera is doing all kinds of DSP to undo the barrel distortion of whatever lens it currently has attached. If you get the RAW from the camera, you'll get the original picture... but in that case Photoshop is going to be the one that's unrolling the barrel distortion.

So either way, you're screwed. Just call it a beautiful car and be done with it

JER · Jun 29, 2015

The blue Model S image on the home page has been edited; the red brake callipers of a "P" model used to be visible.

David99 · Jun 29, 2015

This is very basic physics of how things look from a single perspective. Any normal lens on a camera does that. Take any photographic device (yes your phone will do), stand in the middle of a road, take photos. The edges of the road will cover the entire width of the photo close to you and then converge towards the distance. Is the road wider close to than it is in the distance? Of course not, but in any photo this is what happens. Objects of the same size that are closer to the camera will always take up more space in your photo than distant ones.

gavine · Jun 29, 2015

I don't mean to hijack this thread (and sort of change the subject), but the lighting on this one looks like the window trim comes-down.

Electricfan · Jun 29, 2015

deonb said:
All pictures are distorted.

I certainly agree with this. But, my point is a little different than yours. There is a difference between a camera distorting a picture and the photographer distorting it intentionally, which is what I think happened with the Tesla shot. If you look carefully at my car and the beautiful picture from the website, do you see how most of the tail-lights are visible on the Tesla picture, but in my picture you can only see the left one? How did Tesla do that? I think it was a special lense on their camera. I'm not attacking them - its a marketing tool and they're trying to sell cars. Its just interesting to me that you are seeing a car in the picture that doesn't exist in reality. Its distorted intentionally by Tesla to make it look better. At least I think it is - I could be wrong. Its just like the fashion models you see in ads - they're air-brushed to death. Here Tesla is just doing it with the car instead of the girl. Maybe. I'd love to hear from Tesla - surely they wouldn't mind stating what kind of camera and lense were used in the shot, and if it intentionally distorted the car to show more of it. But just based on my amateur night investigation I think they doctored it quite a bit.

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gavine said:
I don't mean to hijack this thread (and sort of change the subject), but the lighting on this one looks like the window trim comes-down. OH Wait - do you mean the triangle of light above the rear wheel, that looks like trim but is just light reflections? I love this picture - its in the rotation on my desktop background.

Could you be a little more specific? Its after lunch for me, so all the blood is in my stomach digesting my food, and I'm not getting you.

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David99 said:
This is very basic physics of how things look from a single perspective. Any normal lens on a camera does that. Take any photographic device (yes your phone will do), stand in the middle of a road, take photos. The edges of the road will cover the entire width of the photo close to you and then converge towards the distance. Is the road wider close to than it is in the distance? Of course not, but in any photo this is what happens. Objects of the same size that are closer to the camera will always take up more space in your photo than distant ones.

Ok, well, but why doesn't my photo look more like Tesla's photo? Look at the tail-lights on their picture and then mine. I'm at about the same angle to the car, so why can you see both the tail-lights in their picture but not mine?

deonb · Jun 29, 2015

Electricfan said:
Ok, well, but why doesn't my photo look more like Tesla's photo? Look at the tail-lights on their picture and then mine. I'm at about the same angle to the car, so why can you see both the tail-lights in their picture but not mine?

Your angle is quite a bit different actually.

A wide lens can't see around corners - it can't introduce a line or object in a photograph that you can't also see on a flat lens. All that it does is to stretch the curves inside the image:

So if you get your angle right, you should be able to see the same lines of the car (front left wheel, rear right light etc.), but with a different lens the perspective will appear different. Depending on the lens, the car will appear shorter and stubbier or longer and leaner, but all the same details will be present.

Electricfan · Jun 29, 2015

deonb said:
Your angle is quite a bit different actually.

A wide lens can't see around corners - it can't introduce a line or object in a photograph that you can't also see on a flat lens. All that it does is to stretch the curves inside the image:

View attachment 85701

So if you get your angle right, you should be able to see the same lines of the car (front left wheel, rear right light etc.), but with a different lens the perspective will appear different. Depending on the lens, the car will appear shorter and stubbier or longer and leaner, but all the same details will be present.

Ok, so to be clear, are you saying if I get my Iphone in just the right place I can take a picture of my car that will look identical to the Tesla picture (leaving out the different color paint and rims)?

Or are you saying Tesla used a different lense so the picture is distorted? This is what I'm thinking. If you look at it, there is no way I could change my photo to match Teslas - looking at the back end and how much is shown of it, and the side of the car and how much is shown of the side. I can't see any logical way I could move my camera to get all the details of BOTH the side and the rear-end that they show. So I think they doctored it and used special lenses. Which makes sense - they probably paid a professional photographer a lot of money for that shot.

imherkimer · Jun 29, 2015

Ok, well, but why doesn't my photo look more like Tesla's photo? Look at the tail-lights on their picture and then mine. I'm at about the same angle to the car, so why can you see both the tail-lights in their picture but not mine?[/QUOTE]

Ok, well, its because you are not at the same angle, nor the same distance, nor using the same lens.

gavine · Jun 29, 2015

Electricfan said:
Could you be a little more specific?

Sorry...the C-Pillar.

deonb · Jun 29, 2015

Electricfan said:
Ok, so to be clear, are you saying if I get my Iphone in just the right place I can take a picture of my car that will look identical to the Tesla picture (leaving out the different color paint and rims)?

Well, no. If you take a picture with an iPhone it will probably look closer to this:

I say closer, because it's a cropped image so I don't have the midpoint, and I'm not inspired to go find it

. So it won't look exactly like that but probably closer to that than the original.

But either way - it won't prevent you from getting the same detail in there. There is nothing in the original picture that's not also on this one.

You can see even if I overdo the effect in both directions - at no point does it add or subtract any detail:

The best zoom & angle adjuster on a camera is your feet. Use them

.

One thing that I think you tried to do is to mimic the framing of the picture (i.e. how much of the picture does the Model S take up, and where what is located in which quadrants).

Don't try and do that - you're trying to emulate something from a cropped image. Move back a bit and around the car to the right - it will be further away in your viewfinder than you see in the original picture, but at some point you'll see all the same detail at the same angles. Once you do, snap it, and crop it on a PC/MAC to get the same framing. I think you'll find the picture close enough after that.

Electricfan · Jun 29, 2015

gavine said:
Sorry...the C-Pillar.

View attachment 85705

I see, yes that's cool! It might actually look good if they'd do that with the trim.

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deonb said:
, but at some point you'll see all the same detail at the same angles. Once you do, snap it, and crop it on a PC/MAC to get the same framing. I think you'll find the picture close enough after that.

Rats, I gave my car to Tesla for service, so I can't try it any more right now, or I would. I'm interested to see if this is true - "at some point you'll see all the same detail at the same angles." I'm skeptical. I think they took two pictures of the car - one with more detail of the rear-end, and one with more of the side, and glued them together. But I will definitely check more when I get my car back. Thanks.

Is the pic on Tesla's website photo-shopped?

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