The things we do for the ones we love...

[03COBRA]

Well for Christmas I decided to do a few things to my GF`s 08 tC. I knew that she wanted coilovers and few misc items. But I didn`t just want to wrap them in a box and give them to her. So I came up with the insane idea of taking her car Christmas eve night, and plan to install everything overnight and bring it to her house on Christmas morning. Well I got started at 11:00PM on Christmas eve, and finished Christmas morning at 5:00AM. I also knew that I was gonna be a little tired, so I had a couple of monsters ready to go!! I did throw a fresh coat of 845 on her for the winter...



The funny part is after I got done I tried to go to sleep before taking the car back, well I guess the Monsters had me so awake I couldn`t fall asleep. So I ended up being awake for about 30 hours straight until the Monsters wore off. Then I felt like death itself.



Anyways, here are some pics of the before and after and a list of the parts installed!! Basically all the car has before was20% tint and 5000K HIDS...



- Tein SS-P coilovers

- TRD black chrome front upper strut bar

- Piaa ION yellow parking lights

- SuperBrightLEDS 4500K Pure white license plate lights

- Real CF license frames

- S2K Antenna

- VRD upper and lower front grille

- Factory OEM lip spoiler



Before... 11:00PM.

[Lumadar]

Wow, you`re crazy! The car sure looks great though, nice work man. What a trooper...

[imported_wagonproject]

Wow looks nice!



Hopefully theres a wedding planned soon?

[Anzafin]

Wow indeed! And those pics... sharp I say!

[kaval]

That`s awesome. This picture is epic:

[Thomas Dekany]

Wow! What a difference. I bet she was very happy. BTW, what kind of camera is that? Very nice shots.

[Barry Theal]

Looks Great Man! I Hope Your Girlfriend Likes It!

[03COBRA]

tdekany: I use the Nikon D80. I used a technique that`s becoming very popular nowadays called HDR ( High Dynamic Range) where you use atleast 3 differently exposed pictures to make one. You may have heard of it!! Look it up on Wiki maybe when you get a chance. I used this on all pictures of the car, so you can see the different effects you can get...



Thanks guys it was a lot of work, but well worth it. It`s almost scary how awake you feel at the 24 hour mark with 32oz of Monster in you!! That stuff is no joke, first time I`d ever had them...

[JpiRally]

nice man...you better get mad sexAy time for that.lol.



Question about the D80...Have you noticed you have to tone down the photo by about .3-.7? mine reads really high and hot. I am coming from a canon used with 4 L glass pieces.



joe

[03COBRA]

Thanks Jpi. Yeah since you mention I do find it to be that way most of the time. That`s kinda why I went with 4 or 5 different exposures on each shot while I was out. Just in case I got any hot spots or something I didn`t like. And I wanted to mess around with HDR some. I wanted to test HDR, by trying to make a picture look perfect, and then the famous artsy HDR type picture...

[jordanrossbell]

Wow, what a guy! That car looks great and your photography skills are something to aspire to

[BigAl3]

that was very thoughtful of you :up is there any negative camber on the wheels?

[Thomas Dekany]

tdekany: I use the Nikon D80. I used a technique that`s becoming very popular nowadays called HDR ( High Dynamic Range) where you use atleast 3 differently exposed pictures to make one. You may have heard of it!! Look it up on Wiki maybe when you get a chance. I used this on all pictures of the car, so you can see the different effects you can get...



Thanks guys it was a lot of work, but well worth it. It`s almost scary how awake you feel at the 24 hour mark with 32oz of Monster in you!! That stuff is no joke, first time I`d ever had them...

I`ve heard of HDR, but never read up on it. I will now. Thanks. I am a Nikon fan. I was going to receive a D60 but decided not to get it for now. Again beautiful pictures.



However I have no clue of what Monster is. Must be something else. I`ll google it for sure.

[89gt-stanger]

tdekany: I use the Nikon D80. I used a technique that`s becoming very popular nowadays called HDR ( High Dynamic Range) where you use atleast 3 differently exposed pictures to make one. You may have heard of it!! Look it up on Wiki maybe when you get a chance. I used this on all pictures of the car, so you can see the different effects you can get...



Thanks guys it was a lot of work, but well worth it. It`s almost scary how awake you feel at the 24 hour mark with 32oz of Monster in you!! That stuff is no joke, first time I`d ever had them...

Nice job! Now tell her to get a real car! (Give me a sig check.)

[03COBRA]

BigAl3: Not after the alignment. The kit that I got comes with upper camber plates in the front. We could make it perfect 0 degrees of camber. But the specs from the factory called for atleast -.5 degrees, so we went with that. It`s got a half degree of negative camber all around. Caster and toe are great, really happy with the alignment specs...



89gt-stanger: Haha, a real car!! It`s a good little car for her honestly. She`ll probably have it atleast through college. Then maybe upgrade to something else. But nothing with a lot of power...



tdekany: Monster energy drink is what I was referring to. Yeah HDR for me is a lot of fun, I really enjoy the endless possibilities of what you can do with the pictures. Here is what the steps look like when you do an HDR picture. This was a tutorial I made for a guy on another forum...



Start with these pictures:

















Then you load them into the Photomatix program and it gives you this image:





Then you go to the tonemapping function in Photomatix:





Then after tonemapping in Photomatix, and then some touches in Photoshop, this is what I came up with!!