Lowering ambient light to shoot car - light painting

G

GuinBondEyes

Messages
198
Name
Chris Richards
Edit My Images
No
I want to photograph a car in a showroom. I am working under the following restrictions -

1. I have ZERO control over the ambient light as there are display spot lights everywhere.
2. I want to light paint the car

I've had a go, and to be honest I am very pleased with the initial results - but due to the bright ambient light, even shooting at F22, ISO 100, I can still only expose for say 10 seconds before the ambient light starts to become a problem.

So, I want to control the ambient light - ie lower it. I was thinking along the lines of using some kind of filters. I've never used filters before - only uv to protect lenses. Can anyone give me some pointers.

Many thanks.
 
So you can't just turn off the spot lights?....
A filter will drop your overall exposures but your still going to have the same kind of issue I would imagine unless the light your painting the car with has a higher output of light than the spot lights.
 
As photographers, we need to be control, as we are responsible for the quality of what we produce.

So, you need to do these shots at night, with all the lights off. It's as simple as that.
 
ND filters are mostly crap. The one I infrequently use was buttock-clenchingly expensive because cheaper ones suck rocks. Think nasty colour casts and screwing with your sharpness. Even if you whack a load of ND filtration in front of your lens, you'll either need a brighter light source, or proportionally longer time with the same one as you are currently using. If it's the latter, then you're back at square one with the ambient - you can't beat physics.

You're better off attacking this another way. Get the lights off or bring in some decent sized strobes.
 
Garry Edwards said:
As photographers, we need to be control, as we are responsible for the quality of what we produce.

So, you need to do these shots at night, with all the lights off. It's as simple as that.
Click to expand...

With respect Garry that is a not helpful given what I have already explained. If I am shooting outdoors - I can't control the sun. If I am shooting a wedding, I can't control the lighting in the church. In this case I simply cannot control the spots lights OR get access to the facility at night.
 
Lyope said:
ND filters are mostly crap. The one I infrequently use was buttock-clenchingly expensive because cheaper ones suck rocks. Think nasty colour casts and screwing with your sharpness. Even if you whack a load of ND filtration in front of your lens, you'll either need a brighter light source, or proportionally longer time with the same one as you are currently using. If it's the latter, then you're back at square one with the ambient - you can't beat physics.

You're better off attacking this another way. Get the lights off or bring in some decent sized strobes.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info on the filters. As already said - I cannot turn the lights off :( I can however use much more power. I have already achieved pretty good results using an LED light source.
 
Out of curiousity why can't you turn the lights out?
 
scotty1.jpg


You simply cannot light paint the car if you have a huge amount of light or different light affecting the image, so you have to control that light, or overpower it. You said: "If I am shooting outdoors - I can't control the sun." but you can. You use screens to either filter or block the sun, or you overpower the sun. Light painting just wont really do it, as you need to use long exposures. It is a good technique for working in poor light and picking out details,

So your options as I see it are:
1. Re-evaulate exactly what you want to achieve and how you are approaching it
2. Block the spot lighting thats interfering with your attempts, however I doubt a car showroom would want stands and screens near their cars. Perhaps a large gazebo arranged around the car if you must do light painting.
3. Bin the light painting idea and overpower the spots with bigger studio lights
4. Use the light provided with reflectors to add fill
5. A mix of all the above.


This was shot in a hall, with a bright red strobe fired at the rear of the car that couldn't be moved. It's lit from ambient light in the hall, reflectors and a flash by the rear wheel for additional lighting.
99829432.jpg
 
GuinBondEyes said:
With respect Garry that is a not helpful given what I have already explained. If I am shooting outdoors - I can't control the sun. If I am shooting a wedding, I can't control the lighting in the church. In this case I simply cannot control the spots lights OR get access to the facility at night.
Click to expand...
With respect that's not quite true, we move people in relation to the sun or windows, we use very powerful lights to balance or overpower the sun. When we absolutely have to accept the ambient light though, we accept the quality of light would have been better had we took control.

So if we accept the spotlights, but we don't want them showing up, we have to overpower them, which means flash, and very large soft boxes. That'll give you the same quality of light you wanted to paint on the car, but with enough power to render the spots insignificant.
 
GuinBondEyes said:
With respect Garry that is a not helpful given what I have already explained. If I am shooting outdoors - I can't control the sun. If I am shooting a wedding, I can't control the lighting in the church. In this case I simply cannot control the spots lights OR get access to the facility at night.
Click to expand...
Well, I'm sorry if that isn't helpful, I just tell it like it is.

And as Phil pointed out, we can and do control the light in all situations. It just needs the right resources - knowledge and suitable equipment.
If a client tells me that I can't shoot at night when I need to, or that something can't be moved, I decline the job.
 
Garry - I appreciate you (and others) taking the time to provide input. However - I must reiterate that I have no control over the spot lights.

It will also not be possible for me to use large softboxes, stands etc.

Finally - this shoot is for my pleasure, not a commercial job
 
Last edited:
So why light painting?
What are you hoping to achieve over and above the current lighting setup provided in the showroom? What's missing?
Do you have a light meter so you can work out the sort of power you need to overpower the lights?

Have you an overview image so we can see the issue. You'll probably get specific advice to the lighting required.
 
GuinBondEyes said:
Garry - I appreciate you (and others) taking the time to provide input. However - I must reiterate that I have no control over the spot lights.

It will also not be possible for me to use large softboxes, stands etc.

Finally - this shoot is for my pleasure, not a commercial job
Click to expand...
Then you've simply painted yourself into a corner.

As someone else said 'it's simple physics'. It's a simple task to light paint a car. It's a simple task to overpower a few spotlights. Overpowering the spotlights by light painting using something of a reasonable size, is where you have set yourself an impossible task.
 
Byker28i said:
So why light painting?
What are you hoping to achieve over and above the current lighting setup provided in the showroom? What's missing?
Do you have a light meter so you can work out the sort of power you need to overpower the lights?

Have you an overview image so we can see the issue. You'll probably get specific advice to the lighting required.
Click to expand...

Hi.

Why light painting? The vehicle in question is VERY expensive, so I'd prefer not to be dragging softboxes, grids, stands etc around - in fact it would not be permitted. It is also quite a confined space, so light spill even with grids etc would be difficult to control.

Yes, I do have a light meter.

Sorry, I can't show you an image - I have been asked not to show pictures of the cars publicly - but I will say that the vehicle is priceless and a complete one off.

R
 
Phil V said:
Then you've simply painted yourself into a corner.

As someone else said 'it's simple physics'. It's a simple task to light paint a car. It's a simple task to overpower a few spotlights. Overpowering the spotlights by light painting using something of a reasonable size, is where you have set yourself an impossible task.
Click to expand...

So, you really don't know the metrics I am talking about - so you can't say it is an impossible task.

As I have already said, I have almost achieved what I set out to achieve. This was using a very low powered set of led lights. So, I don't see why I can't knock down the ambient and up the power on the light source I am painting with and increase my success rate.

AND finally. Yes, yes, yes - I am sure it is technically easy to do many things in photography - but I still like to think you have to have eye and a creative ability. :)
 
You're completely misreading the posts here though.

The point is, quite simply,unless you have a very much more powerful light than the ambient spots, they will appear on the image.

If you imagine that the light you're using to paint with is illuminating your car for about 1 second (as you move it) and the spotlights are illuminating it for 1 minute, then let's say your light stick is 1m away and the spots are 3 metres away.

The light stick would need to be 4 times as bright (if you can do it in a minute) to be the same brightness. To knock out the spots you'd want them at least 2 stops under (probably 3 for safety) so you're looking at 16 or 32 times the brightness.

That's back of the fag packet calcs,

You could try getting a much better light stick than you currently have and stacking exposures, just light a panel at a time.

You think we're being unhelpful, we're trying to make you understand that it's not about artistic vision, it's simply the amount of light hitting the car, and you need to overpower the ambient, which is quite powerful spotlights. You can't filter out the ambient but allow through your chosen light, unless you're fitting filters to the spots.

With the right gear it's easy, but you want to use the wrong gear, so it'll be harder. Not impossible but you need to understand what the problem is so that you can fix it by either stacking or using a really bright light.
 
He wants to borrow my setup, plenty of flash guns here:
137783120.jpg



As for light painting - it's a lot easier to balance using a torch or low power flash guns against darkness :)

146577799.jpg





See some of us do actually have an idea about what you are trying to do. Really bright lights are a pain, balancing lower light levels gives you so much more time and so as bigger leeway for error.
 
Last edited:
Can you not buy a few sheets of ND gel and lower the lighting level a few stops?
 
I think you have the replies you need. A ND filter will give you more time to paint, but you also need more powerful lights. Could you use an assistant (or two) and paint the light in more quickly by working in parallel?
 
If you can't touch lights etc I'd go down the route of merging lots of shots with each area lit on each different shot . This will also let you decide which areas you want lit in the final image .
 
A heavy ND filter on the camera. Maybe even some ND gels and gaffer tape on the spots and lights you can't otherwise control, too.
You'll probably need to up the power of the lights you're using, as you say.
 
as others have said if you are lightpainting in intense ambient light conditions you're gonna need hugely powerful light painting sources to allow you use f/stop, nd filters etc to kill off the ambient light whilst maintaining exposure through your light source. Most likely your lightpainting source won't be powerful enough. I'd be looking at high powered flashes instead which allows you to use short duration shutter speeds, ND filters etc to kill ambient light. This shot was taken in broad daylight along with interior spots on using a Lencarta Safari Li-on.

1456734_10152092333316882_2041821051_n.jpg


1463083_10152096669451882_2106801302_n.jpg
 
very nice, even love the detail of your logo in the first shot along with its reflection, brilliant.

Sorry OP im no help lol
 
How about using speed lights/strobse in high speed sync mode, and raised the shutter speed to reduce the ambient light.

you could use a good number of the with suitable coloured gels.
 
Surely the answer is obvious, you don't need to listen to all these so called 'photographers' with their talk of light and control, you just need a better camera.;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top