Lighting Models Inside a Vehicle

[myfotoguy]

I have a volunteer project where I will be taking shots of some children inside a vehicle – various poses and shots.

I am thinking through how to light it, and open for suggestions.

I’m thinking of using white foam board or white poster board to bounce the flash off of inside the vehicle so I have white surfaces to bounce from. So I don’t pick up the color of the inside surface of the vehicle, which I think will be gray, but one of them might be blue or green tinted surfaces. So maybe it doesn’t matter if it is gray, but wouldn’t the white boards give me more options and control?

Would it make more sense to put the flashes outside of the vehicle and shoot straight through the windows (or with umbrellas) aimed at the windows toward where the child will be sitting? Will the lights need to be close to the window?

So ideally, I am looking for quality, well-lit “models” and possibly also be able to view what is outside the windows beyond them as well.

Does anyone have experience with this sort of thing, or any thoughts?

I realize testing various setups will give me my own answer; I unfortunately am not sure how much of an opportunity I will have for that, so I’m looking for a starting point.

This is the basics of what I am working with…

The vehicles(s):
- One crossover and one minivan with tinted windows.
- I will be inside the vehicle taking pictures with a wide or ultra-wide lens.

My equipment:
- D300
- Nikon Wireless CLS using pop-up as commander
- SB 600
- SB 900
- 2 stands
- Umbrellas
- Plastic dome for SB900
- Sto-fen for 600
- Demb flip-it pro for either flash

 

[Village Idiot]

What time of day? I'd say just try using fill. If you're using too much of a directional light, you could end up killing the interior of the vehicle. I'm not sure how much of the interior you're looking at getting into the shot though...

 

[myfotoguy]

What time of day? I'd say just try using fill. If you're using too much of a directional light, you could end up killing the interior of the vehicle. I'm not sure how much of the interior you're looking at getting into the shot though...

Keep it simple! I like it!

The time will be 2PM, no options, that's when we need to meet for this thing. Likely in a driveway possibly under some trees, next to a house. I'm thinking I will need to get some light on the subjects and not count too much on daylight helping me out inside the vehicle.

I only need enough of the interior for context of where the child is, the focus will be on the child in his seat and what he is doing.

 

[Village Idiot]

I can't see what you're shooting with as your Gear link takes me straight to Zenfolio's home page, but I'm thinking you won't have a problem at 2mp with light, even with tinted windows. Bump up your ISO is you have to. If you're using a camera made in the past 5 years, you should be able to shoot upwards of 800 ISO without too much problem, if needed.

What are you shooting for? If it's for an advertisement, I don't see you needing a big stylized lighting setup. By googling "car seats" images, this is one of the first photos with people in it:

http://babytrendcarseats.com/wp-content/uploads/Baby-Trend-Car-Seats.jpg

It's very natural looking and there doesn't appear to be a lot of complicated lighting going on. I guess it totally depends on who/what you're shooting for though.

 

[Derrel]

http://babytrendcarseats.com/wp-content/uploads/Baby-Trend-Car-Seats.jpg

Looks like a 3-light, studio light set-up, with a huge diffusion panel set up as the main light outside the open car door. See the long,skinny,specular highlight on the woman's fingernail? That's from a huge, flat light source, and it's so softly lighted on the kid that it's obvious (to me) that the light source is a BIG one. The shadow from the other head rest is a second source, harder, probably from an 11 inch reflector, aimed in through the back window. The warm orange-ish, colored fringing to the woman's hair shows a gel-warmed back light coming in from outside the car. This shot *is* a big, stylized, professionally-done commercially lighted shot. It only looks simple because it is done so skillfully, by a professional commercial shooter trying to mimic late afternoon sunlight in a warm climate.

 

[myfotoguy]

Not sure why that link brought you to the Zenfolio home page. I have a Nikon D300.

Thanks for your help, I'll keep it simple and use my flash for fill as you suggested.

 

[myfotoguy]

Oh, I forgot, this is sort of "advertising", it will be part of a production that will be shown on "big screens" in a church sanctuary. I just want it to look nice and not like it was shot in a cave with straight on flash.

Derrel- Thanks, it looks like I have a few different directions I could go with this. I'll start simple and see what I get, and add lights if I need to. My gear is listed in my original post above, I also have gels if I want to warm up the shots.

Thanks!

 

[Derrel]

Unlike the shot Village Idiot linked to, where the outside is blown-out and unrecognizable due to overexposure, if you want to show the outside environment, you have a classic example of needing to balance flash with an ambient light exposure...

So, the basics need to be determined, as they have been for decades: within the limitations of the camera one has, the daylight/ambient exposure needs to be computed.

You live in Minneapolis, not Miami, so I assume you will have a winter-time type of light level. You need depth of field inside of a car, and wider-angle lenses give small image magnification and so you'll have good DOF at f/11 to f/13. Shutter speed will need to be adjusted to give the right "look", based on tinted windows or not, time of day, and desired brightness of the outdoor part of the exposure. You could have flash be the MAIN exposure inside the car, and allow the outdoor light to "burn in" by using a slowish shutter speed, like say 1/20 second, maybe 1/8 second on a dull day, with the camera at ISO 200 or so. The trick is to balance the flash with the ambient light outside, IF you are actually "showing" things that are outside the car. people have seen a lot of car pictures, so one accepted look is to have the windows blown-out white...so you could use a shutter speed that is actually TOO LONG to "show" things, and instead allow it to "blow". You can also adjust the ISO upward, and use a very small amount of flash inside the car.

I've shot inside of boat cabins, and I think a rounded spherical dome, or the dreaded FOng diffuser type of deal, is a good choice for such cramped quarters. Highly-directional light inside of a cramped space can look faked, or give problems with near-to-far fall-off. Due to the closeness of the confines in a car or boat cabin, light falls off VERY,very,very rapidly in small spaces, so using an omni-directional source, or a positively HUGE source, are two ways to make the light appear more even across the entire area. Inside really cramped places like boat cabins, bounced flash off of the ceiling appears very "hot" at the top of an adult figure, and by the waist level, the fall-off is so pronounced that it can look absolutely horrible. hence, the desirability of something that spreads the light around in ALL directions, like a bare-tube head or a Fong dome.

 

[myfotoguy]

Thanks for the input guys. I appreciate it. Part of the scene will be shots of kids engaging in activities "while on a road trip". So in second thought, maybe letting the windows blow out a bit is the best thing to do (or edit in highway and traffic in the windows later from a separate shot taken on the freeway), but not sure I want to do all that.

Thanks again for your ideas and suggestions!!