Lighting a car in a garage with continuous lighting

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Tom
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Hi folks, I'm working for a firm that is selling some high end cars and they want a standard set and look for the photo sets it uses for each car. They have offered to purchase any lighting kit I need to do a decent job, as I have none of my own, so I'm looking for any recommendations. I'd prefer constant rather than stobes and am not looking for anything mega or high end.

Their location is essentially a garage with grey walls and floors, a high enough roof and a lot of space but lighting wise it's a bit of a mess, with sky lights and pretty harsh and none uniform artificial lighting. I don't need to achieve a perfect studio look, but would like to get relatively close / clean shots. In my head I'm imagining maybe x3 large/long light units with softboxes that I can position to suit, but that's where my brain stops. I'm thinking I'll shoot during the day without the lighting on, so under ambient light through the skylights, so will need powerful enough lights for them to be effective in conditions other than darkness.

Have I given enough info there to be able to ask for any advise on what sort of thing/kit I should be looking to buy?
 
Start with:
  • What you've got.. take some shots of the garage area you've got in mind
  • What you want to achieve.. some example shots in the style that you want
And bear in mind that you want consistency "a standard set and look" but you then talk about using two different lighting set-ups - daylight via the skylights and the constant light set-up. Pick the one you want. If you want to do both you'll have to match the artificial light to the daylight, and that won't be consistent in itself.
 
The sort of constant lighting you'll need for this, powerful enough for your light not to be affected by the ambient light, will be extremely expensive and bulky. Flash will be much easier, better and cheaper.

The sort of problems you'll encounter may not be obvious at this point, but they will certainly exist. Obviously we've got colour temperature to contend with, because even if the actual colour temperature of daylight was constant (which it certainly isn't) those skylights will be discoloured and will certainly create problems. And of course, the light from them will reflect on the shiny bits - and cars are all shiny bits (not mine, or at least not until I wash it again next summer:) ) so you'll get reflections of skylights and windows in the roof, bonnet and so on.

You can get round that by covering skylights and windows, or putting scrims in front of them, but using powerful flash will make that extra work unecessary.

Generally, very large softboxes are used for car photography, directly overhead, plus a lot of smaller effect lights for wheels, door handles, windscreen wipers and so on. That is relatively easy with studo flash, far less easy (but possible) with LED continuous lights, not possible at all with fluorescent continuous lights. You can use a lighting silk instead of a softbox for the overhead light, just arrange a few flash heads above it..

Nothing whatever to do with lighting, but get a turntable installed, it will make life much easier, without it you will be constantly changing positon and changing the lights, and waiting whilst someone moves the car to the precise angle needed.
 
All depends on your budget and yes high powered continuous lights will be more expensive. If there is lots of space, consider installing a proper white walled studio with overhead softbox (that can be moved/dipped) and infinity curve and a turntable floor would be useful too but a cheaper method is just to use vehicle jacks like this: http://www.demon-tweeks.co.uk/motorsport/jacks-chassis-stands/gojak-vehicle-jacks-2
Those vehicle jacks would be a help, but they are nowhere near as good/quick as a turntable.
An overhead softbox that's big enough for the job is far too big to be moved in any way.

Just for clarity, there are plenty of very good car photographers who use small softboxes, and sometimes they don't use softboxes at all, but the way that they go about it is to take lots of photos and basically create a composite in PP - this works for them but it wouldn't work for the OP, who presumably needs to cope with volume and who won't be able to spend days on each image, which is why I posted the reply that I did - I sometimes see myself acting a bit like a GP who tells a patient that they need to do various things, such as have a complete rest for a week, knowing that the advice is going to be ignored, but the Dr says that because it's the right answer...
 
I think the lighting consideration/question is somewhat secondary. I think your biggest problem is probably going to be in controlling the environment that shows in/on the vehicles. Basically, you need to cover/hide everything for a uniform reflection before you ever add lights.
 
First this, photographing shiny things is always about what you put near the shiny thing...
I think the lighting consideration/question is somewhat secondary. I think your biggest problem is probably going to be in controlling the environment that shows in/on the vehicles. Basically, you need to cover/hide everything for a uniform reflection before you ever add lights.

And this...
The sort of constant lighting you'll need for this, powerful enough for your light not to be affected by the ambient light, will be extremely expensive and bulky. Flash will be much easier, better and cheaper.

...

Beginners always assume continuous lights are 'easier' and 'cheaper', but in bang for buck terms, they're cheaper by miles and also easier to work with (overpowering ambient is loads easier than dealing with mixed colour temps).

But I'm guessing the OP read the first few responses and decided to ignore the advice as it wasn't what he'd hoped to hear.
 
But I'm guessing the OP read the first few responses and decided to ignore the advice as it wasn't what he'd hoped to hear.

Seems a bit harsh, they may just be disappointed or even a bit shy that what they hoped for is going to be both hard and quite expensive to achieve. People not familiar with some aspects of photography tend, quite innocently, to think things are much simpler and more straightforward than they really are. Its like watching Torville and Dean - looks dead easy until you try out on the ice.
 
The sort of constant lighting you'll need for this, powerful enough for your light not to be affected by the ambient light, will be extremely expensive and bulky. Flash will be much easier, better and cheaper.

The sort of problems you'll encounter may not be obvious at this point, but they will certainly exist. Obviously we've got colour temperature to contend with, because even if the actual colour temperature of daylight was constant (which it certainly isn't) those skylights will be discoloured and will certainly create problems. And of course, the light from them will reflect on the shiny bits - and cars are all shiny bits (not mine, or at least not until I wash it again next summer:) ) so you'll get reflections of skylights and windows in the roof, bonnet and so on.

You can get round that by covering skylights and windows, or putting scrims in front of them, but using powerful flash will make that extra work unecessary.

Generally, very large softboxes are used for car photography, directly overhead, plus a lot of smaller effect lights for wheels, door handles, windscreen wipers and so on. That is relatively easy with studo flash, far less easy (but possible) with LED continuous lights, not possible at all with fluorescent continuous lights. You can use a lighting silk instead of a softbox for the overhead light, just arrange a few flash heads above it..

Nothing whatever to do with lighting, but get a turntable installed, it will make life much easier, without it you will be constantly changing positon and changing the lights, and waiting whilst someone moves the car to the precise angle needed.

Great advice. Turntable would be brilliant. Large sheets of polystyrene help bounce light and are light and easy to manoeuvre

Magazine shots use a proper studio with a large infinity wall, then bounce the light off the walls, with small lights to pick out details like the wheels. It did take about an hour to set up the lighting right though and these are 3kw, 2kw and 500w lights so it gets warm.

123911833.jpg

123911838.jpg

123911840.jpg


Tyres make dirty marks on the floor as well.

Straight out of camera. You'd tidy up the shadow, floor etc
123911846.jpg

123911857.jpg

123965785.jpg
 
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Great advice. Turntable would be brilliant. Large sheets of polystyrene help bounce light and are light and easy to manoeuvre

Magazine shots use a proper studio with a large infinity wall, then bounce the light off the walls, with small lights to pick out details like the wheels. It did take about an hour to set up the lighting right though and these are 3kw, 2kw and 500w lights so it gets warm.

123911833.jpg

123911838.jpg

123911840.jpg


Tyres make dirty marks on the floor as well.

Straight out of camera. You'd tidy up the shadow, floor etc
123911846.jpg

123911857.jpg

123965785.jpg
Those photos will be very helpful to the OP - or to anyone who wants to do a pro job, and it's a valid method.

It's different though to my own approach, which is to effectively make the whole ceiling the light source, simply by having a pretty massive sofbox (or silk) overhead, this automatically creates the required diffused specular highlights on the bonnet, boot, roof, and just leaves the wheels, tyres and bits and pieces to light.
If the car is always going to be in the same position, the sofbox needs to be (or at least mine was) about 45' x 15' and just high enough to clear the highest car. If a turntable is being used, to allow it to be photographed at any angle, it needs to be 45' square.

Using your kind of setup though, lights could be bounced off of the white ceiling instead, or off of a false ceiling. Again, I would always use flash for this, so much easier, cooler, cheaper and more consistent.
 
This is probably way over the top for what Me2 was asking, but shows the techniques used in the big studios. The ideas the same, just needs to be scaled back and portable, however do look at Tim Wallaces work. He's know for shooting high end cars and is a details person. Look at the way he picks out details of the car.

Also remember that cars can be like big shiney mirrors so you may need something to block reflections from other vehicles and use a circular polariser obviously to cut the reflections especially on the glass.
I had a nightmare once early morning Brecon Beacons where one of the owners get getting in the way, an Uncle Bob, but you could see his reflection in the bodywork, so kept taking longer to get the shots as I kept having to ask him to stay back. Typically the best shot of the day still had him reflected in the bodywork so I had to sort in post.

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Sometimes grey wall etc work. This was an underground car park in Ghent, wasn't planned, we were just away on a trip with friends. I had a folding brolly softbox, a single flash gun and that fluorescent light behind the car. Softbox and flash was held by someone and bounced off the ceiling/wall near the light as it wasn't enough. Not brilliant as there are still reflections in the bodywork, but the B&W worked with the silver car.
163713287.jpg



Garry, how did you secure your silk or softbox overhead? It would have to be pretty secure. If it's the same position used everytime then a fixing on the roof?
 
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I've chaperoned a number of expensive cars to studio shoots for magazines and books. In the pre-digital age they would re-painted the floor after moving the car into position / jacking up each corner and ensuring wheel centre cap was correctly aligned. It was just white trade emulsion but the cost of paint was cheaper than retouching. Go-jack skates were essential bits of kit too.

Tyres make dirty marks on the floor as well.

Straight out of camera. You'd tidy up the shadow, floor etc
123911846.jpg
 
This is probably way over the top for what Me2 was asking, but shows the techniques used in the big studios. The ideas the same, just needs to be scaled back and portable, however do look at Tim Wallaces work. He's know for shooting high end cars and is a details person. Look at the way he picks out details of the car.

Also remember that cars can be like big shiney mirrors so you may need something to block reflections from other vehicles and use a circular polariser obviously to cut the reflections especially on the glass.
I had a nightmare once early morning Brecon Beacons where one of the owners get getting in the way, an Uncle Bob, but you could see his reflection in the bodywork, so kept taking longer to get the shots as I kept having to ask him to stay back. Typically the best shot of the day still had him reflected in the bodywork so I had to sort in post.

122225026.jpg


Sometimes grey wall etc work. This was an underground car park in Ghent, wasn't planned, we were just away on a trip with friends. I had a folding brolly softbox, a single flash gun and that fluorescent light behind the car. Softbox and flash was held by someone and bounced off the ceiling/wall near the light as it wasn't enough. Not brilliant as there are still reflections in the bodywork, but the B&W worked with the silver car.
163713287.jpg



Garry, how did you secure your silk or softbox overhead? It would have to be pretty secure. If it's the same position used everytime then a fixing on the roof?
Yes, permanently fixed to the strucural steel in the roof via chains. The softbox was made from sheet steel.
 
Thats a pair of very nice photos. It must be quite tricky 'posing' cars for such as the first image.

2 foot high grass bank around the car park and a tripod gave the elevation. After that it was just positioning the cars and hopefully miss the impending storm.
 
I've chaperoned a number of expensive cars to studio shoots for magazines and books. In the pre-digital age they would re-painted the floor after moving the car into position / jacking up each corner and ensuring wheel centre cap was correctly aligned. It was just white trade emulsion but the cost of paint was cheaper than retouching. Go-jack skates were essential bits of kit too.

That's Haymarkets studio at Teddington Lock. The floor is repainted last thing so it dries overnight
 
Curiously enough there's a live thread here http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1471146&page=1 on a diy version of what I think Gary was referring to
Sort of, I think, but because I'm not a member I can only see the thumbnail image.
But he says
"in the process of building one will be 10' x 16' powered by 4 about 1600's...."
The reality is that a softbox of that size if far too small for a car. Also, although I'm being a bit picky here, but I know Alien Bees lights (very popular in America but not anywhere else) and the only lights that I would consider using is their Einstein model, which was ahead of its time in its day, the 1600 model (640Ws) that he is proposing to use has enough power for the job but in my experience will produce a different exposure and a different colour temperature with every pop...
 
because I'm not a member I can only see the thumbnail image.

Its free to join and they don't harass you with emails or anything. Been a member for years. Its a good site, but more USA/International than this one, so some questions etc are not so relevant to UK folk.
 
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You can use a speedlight inside a softbox - take multiple shots of the car with the camera on a tripod and move the softbox each time you take a photograph. take 30+ shots then import them into photoshop as an image stack. Mask each layer the remove the softbox in each picture using the brush tool.
 
You can use a speedlight inside a softbox - take multiple shots of the car with the camera on a tripod and move the softbox each time you take a photograph. take 30+ shots then import them into photoshop as an image stack. Mask each layer the remove the softbox in each picture using the brush tool.

Sorry missed this,
Or you could celebrate the speedlight :)
137783120.jpg


4 speedlights, wireless triggers on a light stand. Positions marked out with tape on the floor, multiple exposures combined. Only a few to the front with a softbox.
 
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