Advice please - Lighting a double decker bus

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Hi, a new challenge for me.

I’m hoping to get some photos of a double decker bus, in the afternoon and outside.

I’m hoping that the ambient light will be good, but I’m curious if any of you guys have used strobes on something this big to give it a little extra pop and fizz.

Any experiences or tips you would care to share would be most appreciated.

Thanks
 
If the ambient is bright you’ll need a lot of flash power, as in 000’s if Ws.

In the dark, you could light paint it with speedlights.

I suppose it depends what you’re aiming for, but I would go with the available light during the daytime for something that size.
 
Thanks Phil, I was thinking a couple of strobes might fill in the shadows a little, and provide a more even exposure perhaps, but yes, I don’t think I have the budget for a truck load of lights.

I won’t know until I get there, and meter the light under the exact weather conditions on the day, but I could always do the reverse and go with a long exposure if it’s a bit gloomy.
 
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As above.
This may help, it's a tutorial on lighting a car, and you can easily upscale it for a bus, the principles are the same https://www.lencarta.com/studio-lighting-blog/the-mondeo/#.VjzX9Ssl-hE

The other (and possibly better) way of doing it is to light each part of the vehicle entirely separately (greatly reducing the need for flash power) and put it all together in PP.. This takees a lot longer but, done well, can produce spectacular results.
 
I was thinking a couple of strobes might fill in the shadows a little, and provide a more even exposure perhaps,
Quite possibly.... you're not going to be killing the ambient or anything, but it won't require all that much power to just fill in some shadows a bit (unless the ambient is really strong/bright).
The problem I see is that the lights will be hard, and many/most of the surfaces of the bus highly reflective... so you will likely wind up with a multiple of hard specular catchlights to deal with. I would probably go with exposure blending multiple images...
 
Would HDR help lift the shadows and keep the highlights? I've seen loads of pics of DD busses taken outside without flash. I'm not sure why theres an issue, did I miss something?
 
I lit a whole truck on a company shoot with one B1, camera on tripod multiple exposures blended in photoshop - pretty easy and I think thy would give you the pop you are looking for. You can also put flashes inside or the internal lights with a longer exposure to add some detail.
 
you could consider speed lights inside the bus fired by wireless trigger - give the inside a little pop :)

Les :)
 
One thing that sprang to my mind was long exposures with light painting - using a handheld speedlight, or a torch. Would depend entirely on the lighting conditions and the amount of time you have to fool about with it all though. TBH there are better suggestions here :)
 
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