Many of you all have heard me talk about why, sometimes, a picture means so little when it comes to surface care. Pictures can show depth and gloss... like this one from meguiarsonline.com:




Sharp Stang huh? The black looks really good from a distance but, let's move in a bit closer shall we?....



Not so nice now is it?


This is why I have preached several times that a picture really doesn't do much justice from a distance... When you're standing on top of it, it yields a MUCH different result.

Just FYI.

RP

 

So the contest should be "post an insanely up-close of your truck" so we can REALLY judge the best shine!!

Or a two pic post, one whole-truck and another close up, all done at the same distance (6" or so) WITH flash.

That would be cool...

 

RP, you sound like me now...

 

I consider you one of my teachers Intel... and you're exactly right... pictures simply do very little justice. Plain and simple.

RP

 

Sadly RP I live that example you provided on a regular basis. Another factor that plays into the "deceiving shiny photo" could be because of the quality of the paint job (I learned that from Intel as well)

No matter how hard I try, my wedgewood blue, orange peeled F150 is never going to "beat" my mom's black Q45 in a head to head, up close inspection. Her car *might* get washed 3x a year and never gets polished or waxed. My F150 gets washed all the time and over the years I've bought and used a whole arsenal of polishes, waxes, etc. But if you were to wash both vehicles and stand 15' away, the shine on her car would rival my 'pampered' F150.

chknbone

 

RP,

I think this pic illustrates what you mean, the shine and reflection looks really good, but the factory orange peel is evident. I also took a slightly closer pic, but deleted it because the orange peel started to distort the reflection even more.

So yes, the closer the pic the worse it will appear.

My 99 black has great shine and depth, see contest entry. Though I dont have all those spider web scratches as your pic, it is little more obvious up close it is 5 years old, but it is still in really good shape for that age I think.




Sled...

 

It all depends on the angle of the lighting, etc.

I saw some pictures in the contest thread that the vehicle could actually be swirled and dirty and still get that nice shine. You need to be carefull when picking who you vote for.

I've taken some before and after pictures, especially on white vehicles and in the shade you can get a good reflection that looks like you've just finished polishing and waxing. In real life it doesn't look like that but through the camera lense it does.

 

I've been thinking the same thing about a few of the votes but, I don't have a say in it...

 

Interested to see if these contests turn into a voting for the "best detailed" truck or the "best looking" truck... As in, that truck with all the mods looks cool...

 

Nothing against anyone at this point but, I don't see this one going that route.... yet.