There was that car advert BTS video someone posted here a few months back (I think) where they showed a giant floating light source that turned out to be an enormous softbox. A company specializes in building and renting these things for shooting cars.
Besides a large soft light source you'd need to flag a lot of glass, chrome and polished areas to improve their contrast in the shot. When I did a table-top shoot of my light meter for a blog article, I used my hand as a flag to block direct light from the 24" softbox onto the LCD display. That made an enormous difference to the meter's final appearance. All covered in the Light, Science & Magic book. On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 1:21 PM, J.C. O'Connell <hifis...@gate.net> wrote: > Ive never shot cars with flash professionally but I have seen pro setups > where the flash diffusers are larger than cars! (soft lighting across the > whole vehicle). > > ----------------- > J.C.O'Connell > hifis...@gate.net > ----------------- > > -----Original Message----- > From: PDML [mailto:pdml-boun...@pdml.net] On Behalf Of Paul Stenquist > Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2012 11:26 AM > To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List > Subject: Re: Photographing cars with a strobe? > > I've been shooting cars with flash for more than thirty years, both night > and day. It isn't a bad idea, but it can be tricky. I don't think it will > help you achieve nice compositions in a crowded showroom, but it can work > well as fill in daylight or as illumination at night. > > I used flash for fill on this dreary day shot. It ended up edge-to-edge on > the front page of the Times auto section. I was low enough to avoid > reflection problems, and I used a diffuser on the flash. It has been shown > here before. > > http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=14450338&size=lg > > I've used flash on numerous occasions to achieve motion blur effects at > night, with a frozen central image. These are usually shot at /.8th of a > second while panning: > > http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3708948&size=lg > > And I've used it to achieve sharp pics at night as well. I pick a shutter > speed and stop that will give me some background illumination without > turning it into day, and I tilt the head of the flash up to avoid burning > out the foreground. I usually burn in the foreground a bit as well. Could > have cloned out the hotspot here but didn't bother since it's not all that > distracting. > > http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=11498399&size=lg > > Paul > > > > On Oct 3, 2012, at 8:45 AM, Larry Colen <l...@red4est.com> wrote: > >> I have headed over to Canepa motors a few times to play with photographing > cars. There is a lot of pretty machinery there. Unfortunately, there isn't > much room and it's pretty much impossible to get a picture of a single car > isolated from the other cars on the floor. I had the thought that it might > be possible to do something to isolate a car from the background by using > strobes and taking advantage of the inverse square law, to light a car, and > put a lot less light on any other distracting cars in the background. >> >> I suspect that there are a lot of pitfalls to this technique, starting > with all of the things on most cars that are shiny. >> >> I've also considered using a strobe to shoot a car outside at night, for > very similar reasons. >> >> Does anyone have experience usign flashes to photograph cars? Can you > give me some good simple reasons why this is, if not a bad idea, at least a > lot more work than other possible techniques? >> >> LRC >> >> -- >> Larry Colen l...@red4est.com sent from i4est >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> PDML@pdml.net >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- -bmw -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
