Light Set Up for A Car Dealer Photo Shoot

Good Morning To All...!!!

I have just been hired to do a photo shoot for a Car Dealership, my question is

lighting set up, as how to avoid seeing any reflections...

The Dealership is setting up a Room to do the shoots in, vechials will be

brouht in on top of a rotating platform...I feel you would want lighting in

this base shooting up onto the bottom of the vehicals to avoid heavy shadowing

from above lighting...?...Am I onto something or ?

I felt that if we had over head lighting, say in every corner of the room

facing vechial, plus one centered directly above vechial, plus lighting 3 feet

or so up off of the ground directly facing the vechial and shooting without a

flash...?

I have looked online and find people having reflection problems...

Would it be an idea to use lighting somehow muted as to avoid seeing the lights

on the paint surface of the vechials...?

Would anyone recomend trying to shoot cars on weird angles to avoid seeing the

reflections from the lighting...?

What type of lights/bulbs should one consider as to aviod paint colour changes

from the lights...?

If you feel I missed something please comment...!...As I am trying to set this

up once, as to avoid any problems...

Thanks to all who reply...

Warmest regards,

Jamie

You've been hired to do one of the hardest type of photography there is. Studios that do this right are very large spaces that use enormous reflectors and diffusing panels (scrims) in order to control the apperance of the light sources in the inevitable reflections from the car's many shiny, curving surfaces.

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Just doing some quick random Googling to get you some examples, see the top-center image on <a href="http://www.s3studiorentals.com/en/" target="_blank"><b>this page</b></a> for a sense of the light bank needed to provide the seamless equivalent of a cloudy day.

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Or, <a href="http://www.provehiclephotos.com/studio.php" target="_blank"><b>see how these folks do it</b></a>.

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Without a very large investment in equipment, you're going to have to resign yourself to patchy reflections, specular hotspots, etc. What will you be using for a backdrop? Unless you can get very far away from the vehicle and use a long lens, you're going to be seeing everything that's behind that vehicle. Are these intended to be stylish art shots, or just "here's what we have on the lot right now" used car shots? Defining your expectations up front will help a lot.

I agree w/ Matt. I tried my hand at this recently w/ an outdoor shoot, and found it to be the most frustrating thing I've attempted thus far. Even w/ all the preperation and using a polarizing lens to cut down the reflections (which ended up giving me a focus problem, perhaps it messed up my autofocus and I need to go manual w/ it), I still had shots w/ C-stands visible in the paint. The worst was the umbrella I used to shoot through a 72" scrim, (3/4 stop) was clearly .... CLEARLY visible in the window of a few shots.

It was horrible! Then the nearby yellow wall caused the chrome to look ugly, b/c of its reflections. I literally felt like I had started photography all over again w/ all the mistakes and new things to learn.

I've seen shots like the one you described done-- lots of little round specular highlights in the paint and chrome from the pot lights in the show room. It's not exactly Car and Driver quality.

Bottom line-- I planned that shoot for 6 months-- still crap. You will have to do this shoot a few times to get anything decent-- nothing anyone can tell you will prevent this. Move around, try several angles so that you get different reflections in the final shots-- some should yeild tolerable results =) Then next time improve.

Jamie, why were you hired with no experience in this. Odds are you were the low or only bidder due to your inexperience. Are these new, used or collector cars? How many different vehicles?

How big is this room anyways? If your contract requires you to supply lighting, I'd guess you were sucker punched.

If you want soft non specular lighting, a very large, like 40x50 foot, white nylon tent structure in the parking lot on a bright sunny day is your best bet, and even then reflections will be a problem.

If you look at the above link in Matt's post, you can find their room measurements, a medium sized room is approx 60x60 feet with 26 foot ceilings!

but you'll still need the lights to go in it.

Photography of highly reflective objects is all about using reflections intelligently.