Lighting a bus - advice please

gremlin16

gremlin16

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Hi, I have been tasked with photographing a bus, from the outside at night. I need to light this well enough to see the details on the bus, but not to the extent of daylight conditions.

Anyone know of any reasonable/suitable lighting combinations that would do this for me please. They also need to be portable and battery powered.

My initial thought is something like a pair or three Rotolight Neo II's

All advice and suggestions are welcomed.

Many thanks.
 
I have seen in the past light painting used to "illuminate" cars........though the size of a bus you would need to be creative in how to reach all areas???
 
Any flash will be better than any continuous source.
Light painting is probably the answer, bulb exposure, 2 speedlights (one either end of a broomstick, and wander round flashing
 
sorry, i thought I had pressed send on my reply above.

Its stills and video, so a continuous source would be preferable. Its a single decker, which makes things slightly easier from a logistics point of view. If it were just stills, my collection of AD600's would be up to the task.

Thanks for all the comments so far, they are appreciated.
 
What about led worklights? You can get battery powered floodlights on stands pretty cheap, the two I have seem daylight WB. I think I paid about a tenner for the two in a sale somewhere, they are pretty bright, although you'd need more then my two for a bus.
Question are you talking modern coach or classic old bus? Some modern coaches are pretty close to double decker hight and a fair bit longer.
Another option is to hire floodlights from companies supplying events, they are not as expensive as you might think and will be generator powered and can be had with big high stands.
 
vtrjames said:
What's the purpose of the image? Could you get away with location shots and use the glow of street lights to light it?
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I think that we need to know a lot more before we can offer any useful advice.

For example, if the main objective is to get a good still image, then your AD600's will be fine for that, together with maybe some light from inside created by flashguns. Using Rotolites would just be a waste of time unless you shoot in total darkness at very high ISO.

If you really do need to use continuous lighting for the video, it's hard to beat vehicle worklights, as fitted to off roaders, tractors and so on - very powerful LED lights, battery operated of course and as cheap as chips.

If you can do the shoot in semi-darkness, say between 3 and 4 pm at present, it will be much easier than if you do it in total darkness. Unless you're commissioned to produce a sales video for the lights, I'd think about using the vehicle worklights for the video and the AD600 lights for the finished still.
 
The difficulty with lighting a bus is being able to position the lights correctly. The natural position the bus needs to be lit from above and to side of it. Lightpainting is a technique but generally you need to be in a dark ambient environment or have very powerful continuous lights (think 2k, 5k Arri's hooked to a generator or power outlet) to power over ambient light. For stills, you can strobe and create composite frames lighting different sections at a time. Appreciate this doesn't help for video at all.

Composite lighting with strobes:

Datsun 240z by Khalid Bari, on Flickr

Air cooled Porsche collection by Khalid Bari, on Flickr

Lightpainting (composite frames again):

Porsche 73RSR Sunoco tribute recreation by Khalid Bari, on Flickr

Ferrari 488 Spider by Khalid Bari, on Flickr
 
I see no capri?
 
Forget the Rotolight Neo II, they are not powerful enough. You'd be better off light painting with a high-powered torch. Or blast your AD600 at the bus from different positions and angles and comp the parts together in Photoshop.
 
CambsPhoto said:
Forget the Rotolight Neo II, they are not powerful enough. You'd be better off light painting with a high-powered torch. Or blast your AD600 at the bus from different positions and angles and comp the parts together in Photoshop.
Click to expand...
Doesn't help with the video requirement though...
 
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