Lighting for vehicle photo studio

I work for a large car dealership and we are working on setting up a photo studio for our used cars inside of an older service/detail bay and I am looking for suggestions on how to set up lighting to avoid harsh lines or spots on the car from the lights. We are looking to use continuous light, not flash. Ceilings are about 20-25 feet. Please advice on the best possible set up to use. Thanks!

I've only read a little about it, but from what i've read real pro car studios are huge, with massive amounts of very diffuse lighting. Since cars are reflective you need huge light source, like a wall. Hot lights might be ok, since cars don't move, but be prepared for some very long exposures.

Google "automotive photography lighting tutorial", and take a look at this thread.

I looked up some photos of what actual car studios look like and certainly in these economic conditions a car dealer, no matter how big we are, can afford anything like that. We are going to put a curtain or other backdrop against a wall to hide the piping and everything on the wall. Also, I was thinking that we could hang 4 large continuous lights from the ceiling and use large softboxes pointed at the car? How would this work? We are looking to do this as cheap as possible but to get something pretty effective. any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated.

I think you missed a word there

Given cars stay still you'll get away with continuous lighting and the camera on a tripod. Instead of pointing soft boxes at the car you could point them at a large white wall/the ceiling/whatever around it. That's even more diffuse. Less light will hit the car, but because of the tripod/long exposure that doesn't matter.

The process behind what we are doing does not allow for long exposures and taking our time with the vehicles. We are simply setting a stage to photograph our used inventory for our website. The area we have to work with for photos is in the same area as our detail bay so there will be people working in part of the area. When they are finished with the vehicles they will stack them in another area of the building where we grab them and stage them for photos. We have to be quick as we handle 300-400 cars a month. We do not have white walls or ceiling either. The other idea I had is to make a rectangular frame larger than the vehicle and fill with a white fabric and put a good amount of lighting above the white fabric creating a huge soft box that will spread the light evenly over the cars.

The frame will work. When I say long exposure I mean more like a few second than 1/100th of a second. No difference in practice.

I understand, we have to hand hold the camera though, we will not have time to work with a tripod and move it all around. We would also be using a flash on the camera as well for fill and for the inside of the vehicle. I will propose the frame idea and see how that goes. Any other suggestions? and do you have any suggestions on how to make the frame idea work as cheap as possible?

Thanks!

If you have to be hand held you'll need strobe lighting, not constant lights.

Really though given how your budget and time constraints are looking i'd probably suggest you just park them outside on a cloudy day and take some snapshots.

That is what we do for our stores on our Indiana platform since we do not have a central location for taking photos so we have to travel to each store to photograph the cars so we do them outside and that is the way I prefer to do it. Our stores on our Iowa platform have everything centralized for their recon and detail so they would like to do them inside so they do not have to worry about the elements (especially in winter). Can the frame work hand held given we use enough light above the cloth and use a high ISO in combination with an on camera speedlite?

I think if you use constant lights you'll need a tripod. A tripod isn't a problem to use, and they'll give you a better result.

The problems come from cars being so shiny. That's why you need huge light source.

Here are some examples of what we do. The first link is one of our Indiana stores where we do the photos outside. The second link is to one of our Iowa stores who prefers inside and this is their old set up which is pretty worthless and we are working to correct.

http://www.gurleyleepa​udi.com …aspx?InventoryI​d=26279388

http://www.lujack.com …s=true&include-media=true

Fairly dire. I think if you want to do it better you should do it properly, not do a half arsed job like you seem to be heading for.

There was an article in the new Studio Photography magazine. Interesting read.

http://www.imaginginfo​.com …IS-Bigger-in-Texas/3$4425

tim wrote in post #6669735
Fairly dire. I think if you want to do it better you should do it properly, not do a half arsed job like you seem to be heading for.

The problem is its a corporate environment where we have to move quickly to achieve certain objectives to sell cars. We cannot have the cars tied up in a studio very long so they can get on the lot and the photos can get online for our customers to see. Our objective is to get the cars in and out of photos asap so we need the best we can get. I would love to do a set up like i read about and have phenominal photos, but the fact of the matter is we are not shooting for the manufacturer. I would also love to be shooting with a 5D but the executives don't see it that way either. We have to try to keep costs low and still get good results.

You're in a high volume market and I doubt very seriously if you're going to want to pump time and money into a studio just to shoot used cars. The photos that are up now seem to suit your needs.