Lighting Trick and Tips

the_springer

Anyone have any experience lighted large subjects such as aircraft? I would welcome any ideas of effective lighting techniques other than natural light.

Cheers,
the_springer

ziggy53

the_springer wrote:

Anyone have any experience lighted large subjects such as aircraft? I would welcome any ideas of effective lighting techniques other than natural light.

Cheers,
the_springer

Is this a commercial venture or are you doing this for your own pleasure?

What ambient conditions?

pathfinder

Indoors or outdoors?

Out of doors I would look for a day with a modest cloud cover or light overcast to help with the contrast range of the lighting.

Indoors, you can shoot in a hangar with the light coming into the hangar as a large north window for soft windowlight. Or if totally indoors, you might use multiple flash exposures, either simultaneously or sequentially with a long shutter speed.

the_springer

ziggy53 wrote:

Is this a commercial venture or are you doing this for your own pleasure?

What ambient conditions?

Hi Ziggy,
Person use... I am shooting friends recently redone plane and can shoot inside a hangar with tungsten lighting or outside with natural light. So i was wondering if there are tricks or tips for creatively lighting the subject with auxiliary lighting.

John

the_springer

pathfinder wrote:

Indoors or outdoors?

Out of doors I would look for a day with a modest cloud cover or light overcast to help with the contrast range of the lighting.

Indoors, you can shoot in a hangar with the light coming into the hangar as a large north window for soft windowlight. Or if totally indoors, you might use multiple flash exposures, either simultaneously or sequentially with a long shutter speed.

Thanks Pathfinder,
for indoors, I was thinking of creating a large light bank by using a couple of large light boxes behind an even larger sheet of white satin. Perhaps 8' x 4' with a couple of fill flashes. Thoughts?

Cheers,
John

pathfinder

If this is a personal plane, then I will assume it is smaller than a DC-3.:D

Indoors in hanger, I would look to see which way the hangar door faces - N,S, E, or W and try to use that to my advantage if possible. For example, if the hangar door opens to the west, I would look to shoot in the late afternoon, with the sun shining in. If you can do this on a day with a light cloud cover that might work nicely also as large window lighting.
You might even be able to use flash for cross lighting in this scenario. If the door faces east, then shoot early after sunrise. With north or south facing doors, treat the opening as a large Rembrandt window.

To shoot out of doors, it will be very challenging to build a scrim large enough to shade the plane from direct sunlight - that is why I keep hoping for cloud cover. Is there a large brick wall nearby that you can park next to to be in the shade, and then add fill flash or a large reflector in the sunlight relfecting light into the shaded area?

Shooting outside near sundown, will allow you to better use flash to offset the failing sunlight.


If you want to try to create a large light box, I think you will need at least four battery powered speedlites to get the light you need for a 4x8 foot softbox. Shooting near sundown will help diminish the ambient lighting. I would think you may need ISO 400 also, to give your flashes more "power"

Lastly, you could shoot at night in the dark with the lights in the hangar turned off, put your camera on a tripod on bulb with the shutter left open, and walk around the plane lighting it with multiple burst of light triggered by hand with your speedlite. Dress yourself completely in black so you remain invisible in your image. IF you keep the flash consistently the same distance from the plane, the exposure should not vary from flash to flash as you build the image.

Just a few ideas for you to consider.

Be sure to post a few of your shots here, after you shoot this plane,, to let us see what you have done.