State Farm Business To Business Portal

 

                               State Farm B2B                         

State Farm Business To Business Portal

Welcome to collision photography now wait a minute just before you press that close button give us a second to explain. So why is it so important to select a service shop take the best possible collision photos well one good reason might be that the select service agreement says you agree that electronic images will be of sufficient quality and support the amount of damage noted on the final repair bill think about that we're determining the validity of your final repair bill based on the images you send us so to avoid any possible delays and payment you want your collision photos to be the best they can be now for example if you had to pay to sent along with that estimate probably not so now you can see how a good photo can really validate the amount of vehicle damage.

 

State Farm B2B Photography Techniques:

 

On the final repair bill hey the photography techniques you'll learn about in this series will help you take better photos that accurately depict all vehicle damage written on your final repair bill is okay well here we are with a couple of popular cameras that are being used out in the field roger the canon and the codex so let's talk a little bit about those sure bobs you know both cameras look similar and but the thing is they have different features.

For example one of those things is the macro okay well i don't know if you know what a macro is i hear the term a lot but what does that really mean what does it do you know with this camera bob it depends on how close i can get for example if I’m taking images of bills or two bills or under the hood where i got to get something really close the cameras have limitations this one here i can get as close as one inch okay or this one here the closest i can get on the Kodiak is nine inches where it still remains in focus okay great so uh for example if i want to take pictures of bills and things like that you have to know your camera otherwise they get kind of blurry right exactly and does the flash help me at all with any of this stuff well bob that's a good point because flash can be beneficial and it also can work against you you know if we think about damages on a car we want to look at the shadows that are created by the distortion and the flash if used in some applications will fill those shadows up and remove the damage now how hard is that to turn on and off well in this camera here.

 

State Farm B2B Automatic Features:

For example if i turn the camera on okay according to the little knob on the back here a

little button here there's a lightning bolt okay i can flash and what i can do with that is i can engage it until i can actually remove the flash where it takes it shows me by a diagram on the back of the screen and the flash is now shut off now what example can you give where I want to have the flash turned off. I thought the more light the better well if i put the camera on the automatic feature here and don't manipulate the flash button the camera will adjust itself automatically okay I'm like probably most people out there i would rather not have to adjust all this stuff rather keep it on automatic all the time is that recommended i mean automatic is recommended for most shots but there are those times when you're trying to get capture that one image that really captures a lot of those line entries as you mentioned and the flash is working against me well you talked about a lot of features roger but what about guys like me who don't really understand.

 

State Farm B2B Unique Features:

 

All the stuff about cameras what do you suggest i mean well one of the things that we found bob is that most people don't read the owner's manual yeah i'm one of them and each camera has unique features and so in order to learn about those features reading that owner's manual is going to be key i don't have time to sit through and thumb through this big thick document i mean is there any better way i mean actually there is if i have the camera disc that came with it there's an electronic version of that manual there or if i go to the internet i can download an electronic version both are electronic pdf type format and i can word search them to come up with the outcome i'm looking for if i'm looking at flash or macro.

 All right roger well let's go get some photos and see how you can do this well bob before we get into that let's talk about the camera setup a little bit first okay so one of the things that we get questions on is setting up time and date yeah and with time and date you know do we need it don't we need it the answer to that is either way but if it's used it must be accurate so it's not needed in all cases but if it is used it's got to be dead on all right so we'll do that but if i'm setting up my camera I’m going to hit it on automatic right well automatic for the most part bob will take it right to the functionality where the camera is trying to self-adjust itself and it and that works well in most cases but since we're taking images of vehicles instead of people we have to know how to use this camera better for those type of applications i know one thing you'll probably want me to take high resolution photos right because that's the capability of doing that you know bob we hear that a lot that the high resolution image will probably become the best image to review but actually you can do it at low resolution and the reason we do this because with   claims a day back here they can really have a lot of data capacity issues i understand that but won't a low resolution photo get me a grainy looking type photo.

 

I mean well bob if it's blown up yes it will but at the same time though if we compose our image properly by capturing the things we need for that estimate it'll actually come out really well hey when you take the photo is this is important of how you take the photo what we'd like you to do is write the estimate first and then go get your images because then it's fresh in your mind exactly what the images should show and for those of you who have different state laws that tell you when to take the photo what's different than what i'm telling you then you follow your state law oh and you select service shops out there that mark up the car for a repair plan would like you to take the photos without the car being marked up because see sometimes these files go into litigation and subrogation and those marked up photos aren't good for that purpose so please try to remember that well we've written the estimate on the vehicle and we've identified the damages as the rear of the fender the door and the bumper cover so the first thing in taking images after we've created that estimate is to identify the vehicle to the damages and to do this will I will get an image of the license plate with the damages in that frame now and when you start to frame out your image in the camera you want to make sure that you capture all the car and really leave out all the background of the vehicle because that's really not necessary also too the background can change the light settings of the camera automatically.

 

So we want to capture just the car so in this example here we'll lower ourselves down and by the way it's not always necessary to stand up and do your images you can get down with the damages and by looking at the viewfinder capturing that license plate on the right-hand side we'll take our first image now when we do this we want to make sure that we don't shake the camera so if we can stabilize that camera by in this case here i'll just put my arm on my knee acting as a tripod and then take my shot because if the flash is not engaged chances are it's going to hold the camera lens open a little bit longer to capture that shot in a low light situation another thing is to take a couple images because as you do the review you may find that one is blurry.

 

State Farm B2B Filmless Camera:

 

So typically what i'll do since it's a filmless camera i will sometimes take three shots and i'll review them later and pick the best of the three the next thing i want to do is capture the damages and so looking at the way the light is hitting this distortion i want to try to use those reflections sometimes it'll be lights sometimes it'll be reflections of lines in the floor building corners and so on to bring that into the damage and if we get ourselves position positioned right about here and one thing to keep in mind is you never want to get too close to the car because it really it doesn't let us get any idea perspective wise how big that damage is so if we back up at first capturing this area i'm going to move the camera around to try and capture those light images we'll take an image okay we've changed our angle so we can get a different view so we can maybe see if the damages will change as we change the camera that that time the flash went on we'll take our next shot with the flash off so we can have a few to choose from keep in mind when the flash is off that we want to make sure that the camera is stationary.

 

State Farm B2B Angel:

 

Still so it's not blurry uh change the angle a little bit more take another shot and we may change our position just a little bit see if we can capture that light a little bit different in that damage and in my viewfinder i'm capturing this all up to the front bumper cover to about the middle of the door so this way we have good reference knowing the size of that damage and and also too we can even take one example where we're going to shoot straight into this damage and i mentioned earlier that flash can sometimes take out shadows but sometimes it'll bring something in and so

we're going to turn the flash on here real quick and see how that works as well so what we'll do is take a number of images to make sure we can capture the best one and upload those images that best represent the damages another important consideration is don't capture people in the images they could be called as witnesses in court another thing too to keep in mind is that you don't want to point draw because the image really should stand on its own no enhancements needed hey roger i have a challenge for you everyone knows it's easy to get a good picture on a darker car but what about a lighter car we all know how difficult that isn't for what am i seeing on this damage here i'm seeing some distortion from about here to about here so how do you get something like that well you started out in the right thing bob you're moving around trying to capture light to reflect that light into the distortion.

 

So you could see it with your eye we'll do the same thing with the camera we'll move this around now as i'm moving my head around to capture the best place to take my image i'll line my camera up take my shot and i'm going to try it with flash on flash off so i'm going to get a couple different pieces here to see if i can capture that and i and once again i'm taking the multiple images when i do my review like this right here see them okay yeah all right okay and some of those you couldn't even tell no but i can't see it. It's really important that you take multiple images so you can pick the best shot out of them all okay does it help the person taking the photos to look at the back of the camera like be pretty you know much what you're going to see on the computer screen or is it best to take them and go back to the other bob i like to look through the viewfinder because i can move the camera because the sound always lined up with my eye my i can see things differently than the camera can and so I will move this around until i can capture those reflections in the right location take my shot take my shot and then I’ll review when i get back to a larger screen okay now we have some tips and techniques for you and the first one is keep the best and delete the rest roger talk about that a little bit well the one thing you want to keep in mind is that the images as you make your review.

 

You want to try and capture as many of the line entries in each image as possible this way if you have one image that shows two or three things and one shows six take the six get rid of the three if you have dark images blurry images don't put them in there just to put them in there get rid of them because it distracts the reviewer keep in mind that the images that you select you want the damage that you're trying to capture to pop because the person reviewing this file has seen the car only through the images that you provide hey here's something you didn't think about try using mirrors raj you know bob that's a good point because inspecting a vehicle mirrors can become very helpful and then the question comes up well how do i capture that image of something under the car or something hidden in a location where the mirror is revealing it you can actually take the camera and just like your eyesight focus into the into the mirror capture shot use it as great documentation another important tip to consider is that when using mirrors sometimes it's difficult to get a light source on the bottom side of the car so if you bring a flashlight shoot it into the mirror it'll light that area up then take your shot you'll find great success um big mirrors are working well we can also have small mirrors too either one works just fine let's talk about focusing in difficult areas where it's hard to get a focus on and how do you handle that.

 

That's a good point bob you know the camera since it has these automatic features built into it when you press the button halfway down it shoots out an infrared beam that's trying to focus on something hopefully lighter reflective under the car though with undercoating or flat black or flat surfaces this is not going to work well so if you're trying to capture something at a set distance put your hand in front of the camera first press the button halfway down remove your hand take your shot and you'll find that that area is now in focus and you get the clear shot possible okay you talked about dark areas what about places that use these reflective panels where you can actually see the panel in the image.

 

Well you know there are there we've seen it in images before where somebody's holding a piece of paper with lines on it and that can actually bring out the damages but the same time it works against us because if it goes to court they look at that as an enhanced image but if we can use reflections of the surrounding area the bricks in the wall the rafters and the building the fluorescent lights they work much better if you do have to use age stripe page image make sure that it can be seen in the image along with the damages they know that that stripe has not been distorted and we can use that image okay now what about supplement photography talk a little bit about that well on supplement images we're looking to show the damages sometimes.

 

It's a matter of parts so if you have a grouping of parts you want to separate them on the floor arrange them so that the damage can be easily seen on each part take your shot if it requires two or three do it but as long as we can see the damages on those parts and then also take a quick shot of the parts in the car so we can see that they've been installed and one last thing I wanted to ask you about too I’ve seen you take pictures down pinch wells if the car's up on a rack you're taking a picture down to pinch but what's that all about.

 

What I’m actually doing bob is I’m exciting you know we have cars hitting the side at times you can see the outer rocker panel is badly damaged but you know then there's a lot of time listed on the floor or the inner rocker and the pinch weld really is the guide for that because if that if that distortion is truly there that pinch will be distorted it'll be out of shape and so by sighting it from one end of the car to the other using it as a straight edge in the image you can actually capture that damage you're trying to list on your estimate so you're looking for basically floor damage or frame damage it goes more interior to the car than just say the outer rocker panel. Exactly because we're gonna look under the car to capture that damage instead of trying to capture it by removing seats and carpeting.

 

Hopefully, this has given our audience enough tips and techniques to take back with them to get better collision photography and you know barbeque shows that you need a lot of attention to your images they have a quality outcome yeah there's probably a lot of people out there that are saying hey you didn't get deep enough you didn't cover this you didn't cover that, yeah but you know if you've got tips out there that you can share back with us we'd love to capture those and put them in the next video yeah it'll be great so until then we'll see you next time.