Scion tC Studio style photo shoot

Edited: 7/23/2009 9:06:42 AM by Sicktc06

Hey guys!   Last night, I did my very first studio type photo shoot and my first victim was a bagged Scion tC.  I have a couple of questions for those of you who shoot cars in a studio type environment, or indoors at all with softboxes and etc.  Please note, in this shoot, I used umbrellas (because thats all I have right now) and my Nikon D80.  Within the next couple of months, I plan on having a D300 in my hands and retiring the D80 to backup status.  Anyhow, on to my questions. 1.  When shooting a vehicle, which is prefered for better lighting, softbox, umbrellas, or the majority being bounced lighting?  2.  I tried my best to reduce the amount of reflections of the flash and tripods from the car, but I still managed to get a lot of reflections in the pictures.  Is there a setup technique that a lot of folks use to setup their lighting? (like, rules of thumb?) I have a Novatron Studio Lighting kit that is over 13+ years old, but still works wonders.  I only have 3 actual studio lights/flashes, so I ran into a problem of having the shadow behind the car because I had to have the lights up front to light up the side of the car visable to the camera. Of course, that left the shadow in the back ground. Thanks guys and I'm ok with respective criticism, but please, just remember this was my very 1st shoot so I'm trying to learn as I go. If you guys have any suggestions on what I can do to better the shots, please let me know. I'm open for pointers!  Here are some of the pictures that came out.       

I think for your 1st studio shoot you did a great job. A few more lights would solve several issues; rear wall shadow (put a light behind the car that flashes the wall) and your overall light setup. Now this is where it gets tricky, because every photographer has their own style and their own lighting preference. I prefer having large softboxes as opposed to umbrellas. Softboxes will remove those hot spots.  My studio lighting for vehicles consists of two main softboxes in front of the car and 2-3 small lights behind a set of boards to create a artifical horizon line. There are many different variations that people use, but that's what I've always used.

Edited: 8/5/2009 3:51:06 PM by dragmatic

That's a very good looking TC. I'm not a professional photographer by any means, but would it make sense to back off of the car some so the details would be more defined??