The indoor car show season is starting soon. That means photographing in warm indoor spaces (Yay!!) With horrible light (Boo!)
Last spring, I visited the Canadian International Auto Show (www.autoshow.ca) and wanted to do something different. One of my frustrations with indoor car shows is light – not enough, wrong place, bad reflections, mixed colours. I needed to address that light.
Depth of field is also a concern for me. Normally, I would shoot with a fast prime and keep it wide open. That shallow DOF works sometimes but isn’t always desirable. One of the options to photographers, if you remember your exposure triangle, is to increase ISO and/or lower shutter speed to shrink the aperture.
What’s wrong with increasing ISO? Two things: potentially more noise in your image (Boo!) and more ambient light (Hiss!). Noisy shadows can ruin an image, despite the great advances in sensor technology. Too much ambient light adds distracting elements and worse, more colour casts.
Comparing the two images of this beautiful grey Pontiac Firebird III concept car, the strobe image reveals the true beauty of this car.
If I don’t want to boost ISO, how will lowering my shutter speed help? That nasty ambient light is still an issue and the colour casts are a bigger problem. Indoor car shows have multiple light sources all over the building in every colour! No thanks!
The striking Sapphire blue of this classic Honda Civic is muddied by the ambient light but pops in the strobe image.
For portability, I started to lean towards bringing a speedlight and small softbox. I found the light source was too small to effectively light a car while controlling the amount of ambient light involved. I needed more juice!
I opted for my broncolor Siros 400 L with the Beautybox 65. 400 watt seconds of power is more than enough and the Beautybox gives me a nice hard and soft light source. Hard enough to define edges but soft enough to create pleasing shadows. The fall-off is fairly subtle, as you can see in this photo of the Bullitt Mustang.
One other issue you might not think of before attending a car show: some cars move. The new Acura NSX was on a turntable – slowly spinning around. I set Speed mode on my Siros L to get a fast flash duration to freeze the NSX while keeping a slight blur. This image wouldn’t be possible without high ISO and fast shutter speed, otherwise. A regular speedlight or strobe would have too long of a flash duration, which would add blur everywhere.
The Beautybox is also directional enough to make the exquisite carbon fibre of the Pagani Huayra Roadster shimmer.
For lenses, I brought my Tamron SP 24-70 f/2.8 G2 zoom and my SP 90mm Macro G2. As much as I love primes, I know that there isn’t always enough room to shoot wide and sometimes you can’t get close enough.
Most of these images are taken at f/8. None of them are wide open so I could preserve detail.
Speaking of detail – this is why I love cars. Whether it’s the gorgeous sculpt of the carbon fibre wing of a Nissan GTR at the back or the jewelled headlight at the front, my macro got me in close. Honda’s new Accord has striking detail in its headlights. The carbon fibre brake disc and red caliper of Lamborghini Aventador are works of art. The Hellcat emblem pops off the red sheet metal with a nice, contrasty shadow.
The last advantage to using a professional broncolor strobe – perfect colour temperature and output every image. The Big Machine Records/X Games/Hot Wheels Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution was a tough capture. It was in an awkward area to shoot with one frame, so I stitched four images together into a pano to create this one image. There is no shift in my light at all, which made this possible.
Taking a strobe into a regular day at any car show will be a challenge. I was lucky enough to get a media pass and all the attendees were respectful of each other. If you’re a pro photographer, you should enquire into a media pass. For other guests who would like to try this, plan your visit around times when attendance is lower and there’s less traffic – not the last Saturday or Sunday of the show.
Feel free to share your Car Show images and tag #photonewsautoshow as well!
About the Author – Will Prentice (www.capturaphoto.ca) is a professional photographer based out of Whitby, Ontario and Brand Specialist – Lighting for Amplis.
Will, glad to know that Durham is home to a professional like you.
Great photos at the auto show. You would’ve loved the recent classic car exhibit in Ajax (across from Canadian Tire). The day was beautiful. Fortunately, they have it every year. I’m sure you can capture the beauty of those works of art in a magnificent way.
Thanks, Carlos 🙂 Unfortunately, I had another commitment the weekend of the Ajax show. Oshawa also has a great classic car show but I missed that as well this year. I did get out to “Brits on the Lake” in Port Perry last year – it’s well worth visiting!