31
Photography News | Issue 44 | absolutephoto.com
Technique
On location
This is the best way round to do it, as there’s no point getting the power spot on, and then realising that you have to move the lights due to ugly reflections. In terms of placing the lights to avoid reflections, you’ll have more luck angling them away from the camera, and flat-on to the car; glancing angles give brighter highlights due to the low angle of incidence, so backlighting is hard to pull off. You can see this in the shot above which has the lights showing in the background; it’s a nice look, but the reflections make it tough to achieve. I took several test shots at approximately the right flash power, before deciding on the lights’ positions, each time checking results on screen. For instance, I found that the rear of the car wasn’t being lit, so spun the light around to fill it. The light on the bonnet was also causing a reflection, but this disappeared as I angled it up. It’s just a matter of trial and error. Powering the flash With no nasty reflections on the paintwork, I could go about setting the power of the Left: The set-up for this shot was simple, with just two lights used on the car’s exterior, each with a simple panel diffuser attached to the reflector. More important are subtle changes to the position and angle of the lights to minimise reflections. Above: you can see how even the interior light causes a reflection. Instead, we positioned a flash in the car, but even this had to be moved to the rear seat after it lit up the headlining, reflecting onto the bonnet. Using the lights in the background looked good, in a modern way, but caused lots of problems with reflections, due again to the angle of the lights. If you want to include them in shot, try shooting multiple versions of the setup with the lights in different positions, and then combining them in Photoshop for the fewest reflections.
The flash was lighting the car’s headlining, which was reflecting onto the bonnet
flashes. First though, as the available light had dropped, I extended the shutter speed to avoid a completely black backdrop, setting a speed of 4secs. Next I used a flash meter, held near the car to gauge the power. With those settings of f/16, ISO100, the lightswere correctlypowered at a 1/4 output. It was time to take some shots. Lighting the interior Whileworking, it became clear that the interior would look very flat without some lighting of its own. For this I used the third iLux Summit 600C II flash, again fitting it with a diffuser, and placing it inside the Saab’s front passenger footwell. This I set to 1/8 power, so as not to dominate the exterior lighting. Again, reflections needed to be managed, as the flash was lighting the car’s headlining, which was reflecting onto the bonnet. To fix this, I moved the light into the rear seat and angled it down, the extra bounce reducing its effect and the reflection. By the endof shooting, the light haddropped even further, and I was shooting at 6secs to keep the ambient exposure bright enough.
The lights we used
For this month’s Lighting Academy we used three iLux Summit 600C II flash heads. These full-featured monolights are great for location flash work, thanks to their high-capacity battery packs, so you can shoot cordless pretty much anywhere. What’s more, they have built- in 2.4Ghz wireless receivers, allowing full remote triggering across a range of modes, including high-speed sync for TTL exposures. To make on-the-go handling easier, there’s a fold-away pistol grip type handle, but the lights can still be mounted on regular stands using a screw adapter. shop.photomart.co.uk
Powered by FlippingBook