Alienbees Question

I'm at that point where I'm looking to expand my photography and start building up a lighting set up for myself. I shoot landscapes a lot, where lighting isn't needed, but I'm looking for it in terms of automotive photography. My question is this...Would one Alienbee B800 be enough to light a car at night? I would probably pick up a rectangular soft box as well to help light it evenly, but I still don't know if it would be enough. Would a B1600 or two B400s work out better?

Thanks guys

To get an idea about what the real pros use to light automobiles, click on this link to Studio 3's tour. Click on the fourth button. What you will see is the typical HUGE softboxes or diffusion panels which emulate a cloudy sky in a controllable fashion.

Can you shoot automobiles with one light? Yes, but you'll need to do a lot more to emulate the work you see in car manufacturer's catalogs, for example.

Another good web page to review is this motorcar photography tips page.

Good lord, that is a mahoosive soft box!! How many heads needed to light that I wonder?

You can do it with one light you only need time and pacience.
In this video you can see how to light a truck with one light.
http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=VjyX-A9cujs

If you light from the front, 1 light and a proper bed sheet can go a long way

SkipD wrote in post #15111809
To get an idea about what the real pros use to light automobiles, click on this link to Studio 3's tour. Click on the fourth button. What you will see is the typical HUGE softboxes or diffusion panels which emulate a cloudy sky in a controllable fashion.

Can you shoot automobiles with one light? Yes, but you'll need to do a lot more to emulate the work you see in car manufacturer's catalogs, for example.

Another good web page to review is this motorcar photography tips page.

That's kinda why CGI is moving in on that field.

Sure. Set up your camera on a tripod. Set up softbox and shoot. Move softbox, but leave camera. Shoot again. Do this a couple dozen times, then put the pics together in photoshop. Done.

Is this case it was used a huge soft box but they also use a sigle light to put light in some spots.
At 7.32 they tell that you can have almoust the same result with one light and show some examples

http://www.youtube.com …ture=youtube_gd​ata_player