Photography News Issue 44

Photography News | Issue 44 | absolutephoto.com

Technique 30

Automode Lighting Academy Start your journey into the exciting world of creative lighting effects with PN’s Lighting Academy. This is the place to find out all about how flash and continuous lighting works and how it can be used to improve your shots. This month, how to get great shots of cars using flash on location

Words & pictures by Kingsley Singleton

Final image

There are many factors that make up successful lighting with flash; not only the technical aspects of controlling the exposure, and blending the flash with any natural light in the scene, but also minor movements in the light that affect its look on the subject. The latter is true with any subject you’re shooting; changes in position relative to the subject alter the highlights and shadows. But when shooting reflective subjects, the position of the lights can also lead to them being seen as reflections in the shot. In this regard, cars, like any shiny subject, require special attention in shooting, but with care and a little ingenuity you can get some really good results. Reflection rejection In the example shots here, the purpose was to light a classic Saab 900 Turbo in low-light conditions, making it stand out nicely from the rural backdrop. Shooting on location with a reflective (just washed and polished) car means that it’s not only reflections from the light sources you have to be aware of, though. The surroundings are also easily picked up in the paintwork. The problemwith these location reflections, and those from the lights, is that they spoil the lines and smooth panels of the car, disguising its shape, and making it look messy, much like it was covered in dirt. The car should also be as clean as possible before shooting. It might not be possible to remove natural reflections completely on location, but there are some methods you can use to try. First, position the car so it’s not near any man- made lighting, tall trees, power lines or other structures. In the case of the example images, we shot in the middle of a field, so reflections would be minimal. You can also try using a polarising filter, which may help reduce reflections in the glass and lacquered surfaces. With general reflections reduced, all you need to worry about are the lights you’re placing yourself. Good and bad reflections Sometimes highlights from the lights on the car can be desirable; if, for instance, you can use a massive diffuser that’s bigger than the car itself, you’ll get an excellent wraparound lighting look. Or if the car is in a completely white studio the light can be bounced off ceiling or walls for an even sheen. But who has those luxuries? You can also run a large continuous light source over the car during a long exposure, but that’s a technique for another time. What we want to avoid are blotches, dabs and smears of light; the sort of thing that will make the panels lose smoothness and look messy. These can come from any light source, so even if you’re using small diffusers they need to be carefully placed.

Above Flash can be combined with available light to make a simple, effective car shot. Shooting in manual exposure mode and starting at 1sec for the available light, the flash power was metered to match the aperture and ISO settings.

Available light alone

Exposure settings

Flashmetering

Take some test shots Composing with a three-quarters view of the Saab, and shooting at around 28mm on a Canon EOS 77D and 18-135mm lens, I started by setting up one light to the right of the camera, at about 1.5m from the nose, and another towards the rear, on the opposite side. Shooting in manual mode with an aperture of f/16 and ISO 100, I judged the shutter speed for the ambient light to be about 1sec. Next I fitted the iLux iPort 16 trigger to the camera, and made sure both lights and the trigger were on Group A, Channel 1. The lights were also set to manual, but before working out the flash power required, I checked how the lights were reflecting on the car’s body work.

Choosing your diffusers You might think softboxes would be ideal for this, but they can present problems. Though large compared to a naked flash, the reflection of the diffuser then becomes large enough to become visible. What’s more, unless you have human lighting stands using softboxes in the outdoors is a problem if there’s a light breeze. Here we used lights fitted with spill-kill reflectors and panel diffusers – three iLux Summit 600C II battery-powered monolights. On these lights, the diffuser is a simple frosted plate which sits across the bare flash bulb, but you can also get fabric ones that tie around the reflector. When correctly placed these will do the job well.

The problem with these location reflections, and those from the lights, is that they spoil the lines and smooth panels of the car