Lighting a car, what studio equipment?

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DBPhoto

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Hi all,

as my work away from work I am a car photographer. When it comes to lighting I have mainly been using natural light or light painting to light the cars. So far it has worked very well! But I feel I have now become limited. I have a nikon SB-600 speedlite, which really can't cut the mustard in broad day light and I thought having a studio strobe will be able to generate enough power to over power the day light.

But I am lost in a sea of kits, single strobes and brands that I don't really know much about! Some people have said I could achieve what I want with speed lights (if I had enough). What is the best way of doing it?

Goal:
-To light a car in bright day light (in sections if needs must)

Price:
-£300+? Would ideally like a soft box an umbrella as well.
 
Yes, speedlights will do the job if you have enough of them, but you'll need a lot, and as they aren't cheap there are much better options, based on just cost, never mind convenience.
Overpowering the sun in bright sunlight will need a minimum of 600Ws, if you're using large sofboxes or scrims, which you need to do when lighting things as shiny as cars, and the light will need to be extremely close. 1200Ws would be better, and you may want to wait until The Photography Show and see what pops up there in terms of portable lighting systems.

The other alternative is to use powerful mains powered studio heads, powered by portable battery power such as the Innovotrix. Cost will be roughly similar, the downside will be bulk and weight.
 
Garry Edwards said:
Yes, speedlights will do the job if you have enough of them, but you'll need a lot, and as they aren't cheap there are much better options, based on just cost, never mind convenience.
Overpowering the sun in bright sunlight will need a minimum of 600Ws, if you're using large sofboxes or scrims, which you need to do when lighting things as shiny as cars, and the light will need to be extremely close. 1200Ws would be better, and you may want to wait until The Photography Show and see what pops up there in terms of portable lighting systems.

The other alternative is to use powerful mains powered studio heads, powered by portable battery power such as the Innovotrix. Cost will be roughly similar, the downside will be bulk and weight.
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When you say minimum of 600 watts do you mean 600 watts total or 600 watts per light? When I say over power the sun, I want to be able to have fill light and not blow out the sky.
 
I mean 600Ws (not watts) on the part of the subject that you want to be more brightly lit than it's lit by the sun.

If all you want is a fill light, then you can manage with less.
 
DBPhoto said:
Thanks for the advice so far. I have emailed Phillip Mccordall, hopefully he might be able to share some advice.

@GaryEdwards What is the difference between 600w and 600 watts?

I've been doing some side research and I have seen people over powering daylight with bigger speedlites so 600 should be more than enough?
I have been looking at these kits.. http://www.lencarta.com/studio-lighting-kit/smart-flash-smartflash-studio-flash-lighting-kit-3-head what do you think?
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Watts is energy consumption, and in context it's the amount of energy consumed in one second. This term is used to describe the amount of energy used per second for continuous (tungsten) lighting or heat.
Watt-seconds is the term used when we talk about flash. It's the amount of energy stored in the capacitors, which is discharged during the very brief flash.

So, a 600 Watt-second flash will, in theory, produce the same amount of light during the very brief flash (say 1000th second) as a tungsten light will produce during a 1 second exposure.
In practice, a flash tube doesn't get very hot during a 1000th sec exposure, a tungsten lamp does get pretty hot during a 1 second exposure, and about 2/3rds of the tungsten energy is output as heat, not light.
So, a flash of 600 Watt-seconds is about 3000 times as powerful as a tungsten light of 600 watts.

Yes, the SmartFlash 3 head kit will give you 600Ws, and will definitely do the job, but you'll need a battery pack when you haven't got a mains supply.
 
Since when can't you shoot cars using speed lights?

600ws is nice but
1- its not going to be enough to light a car well when you start working with diffusers
2- You don't need 600ws

Sure I always prefer to shoot with 12000ws heads when I can (actually I prefer working with bounced natural light but thats a different discussion) but speed lights have some great advantages when shooting cars , mainly that they are small light enough that no matter what car there is always room for a couple in a footwell or the boot and they are fast to work with.
 
zilly said:
Since when can't you shoot cars using speed lights?

600ws is nice but
1- its not going to be enough to light a car well when you start working with diffusers
2- You don't need 600ws

Sure I always prefer to shoot with 12000ws heads when I can (actually I prefer working with bounced natural light but thats a different discussion) but speed lights have some great advantages when shooting cars , mainly that they are small light enough that no matter what car there is always room for a couple in a footwell or the boot and they are fast to work with.
Click to expand...
No-one said you can't shoot cars with speed lights.

600Ws is the answer to the question; 'How much power is required to overpower the sun'.
 
So if I was to put 3 heads x 200ws on a car in broad day light, what would be the outcome? If its enough to over power daylight, but not enough to light a car, what would it do?
 
If you're putting the heads inside diffusers, they won't overpower the sun on a bright summers day.

So in those conditions, they'll be a secondary light source.

In less bright conditions they'll become the primary light source.

Like all flash shooting, it's all a matter of balance.
 
Outdoors with flash, your starting point is always daylight brightness. The Sunny-16 Rule says that with direct noon-day sun, shutter speed will equal ISO at f/16. With flash, that is capped by the camera's x-sync speed so say 1/200sec at f/11 ISO100.

With a typical 200Ws head in an 80-100cm softbox at 1.0m, you'll get around f/16 at ISO100. But move that back to maybe 2-3m or more for something like a car, and you're down to f/5.6. There's your problem. A top-end speedlite puts out 100Ws equivalent.

Shooting later in the day or when it's overcast makes a massive difference to what you can do. Shooting the car in sections and blending in post can work.
 
I like this thread for many reasons but mainly because I was reminded of Tim Wallace who has a reasonable grasp of lighting cars;):D

Worth a look for anyone that comes across this thread (or is on it) who is interested in car photography for inspiration/ as a yardstick or even to offer advice for those experts reading- I may as well be inclusive:p
 
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