Looking to recreate some lighting and looking for insight

[RONDAL]

Have the opportunity to shoot a new Audi R10 in 10 days and was hoping to go for something I havent yet seen of the car in any production or flickr images.

Please excuse my linking photos direct, I will paste the url to it below, but for ease of reference for thread viewers I think the photo(s) both need to be visible in this thread.

This is the rear of the Audi R8, it looks basically the same as the R10, aside from some engine changes. Otherwise the layout is basically the same.

http://z.about.com/d/cars/1/0/T/5/1/ag_08r8_engine.jpg


As you can see, the engine is rear mounted and visible by way of a glass hinged cover that lifts up. There is also a window in the engine bay that allows you to view the interior of the car.

http://www.carbodydesign.com/archive/2006/10/03-audi-r8/Audi-R8-interior-1-lg.jpg


Now what I am hoping to do for a unique angle on this car is light both the engine bay, and interior, to produce a shot like this:

http://www.carpages.co.uk/ferrari/ferrari_images/ferrari_f430_engine_27_10_04.jpg


Now to the questions.

I've got 3 speedlights, x2 SB-600's and x1 SB-24 all with the ability to trigger via cybersyncs.

In terms of setup I was thinking of working with a longer lens to get the desired angle mounted on a tripod, and lighting the engine bay with one light source directly from above, and having 2 shoot through umbrellas in each open door to light the interior.

I'm trying to think of the best way to do this with the equipment I have; I've currently got 1 40" umbrella and one 50" umbrella both reversible. Picking up another one is not the end of the world.

Do you think a softbox would be better to produce even light across the engine back, or would a umbrella work okay?
Would it maybe be better to have a shower curtain above the engine bay and shoot a light down into that to really diffuse the light and make it nice and soft?

I notice I will have to remove the headrests from the seats to give the unobstructed view of the interior from the rear, angle the mirror so it doesn't pick up any of the lights, and likely put a white sheet across the windshield to reflect any light back into the interior to light the back portions of the dash.

As far as gelling flashes, I was thinking something cool in the engine bay, with a warming gel in the interior just to contrast the 2 zones.

I've also got a concern about reflections off the glass partition between the interior and engine bay, and how do i deal with that.

One thought was to possibly layer things in CS3, but i've never actually done that. Because its all set up on a tripod I could create like 2 seperate zones and focus first on lighting the engine bay properly, and then on lighting the interior properly and merging the two together somehow. It would be easier, and nicer if I could do it all in one go.

I'll likely have the car for 3 or so hours, but it will need to be detailed which will take a large portion of the time. I've worked through a lot of the lighting already, just trying to get some more insight into what might work better that I haven't already thought of. I'd like to have everything planned out before I arrive so i'm not wasting time trying to map things out from scratch.

Thanks.

 

[Big Mike]

My first impression is that it would be very easy to take the shots (interior and engine) separately and just combine them (via layer masking) in Photoshop. That way, you could concentrate on the exposures one at a time.

As for lighting, remember that the shape of your light will be reflected on certain reflective parts. In the example, it looks like maybe a strip light was used, rather than a more circular shaped light. I could be wrong though.

 

[RONDAL]

ferrari itself commissioned the example i believe so who knows what the budget would be on it and what they used.

would a softbox be a better light source to try and use then so as to avoid the circular light source and the type of light it casts?

 

[Big Mike]

High end car shooting can be really involved...so who knows what they did. It might even be extensive post work to get that look.

Overall, I find that softboxes are much better for controlling light, than umbrellas...you can easily cover parts of a softbox to change the size/shape of the light source.

 

[RONDAL]

yea i've got a call in to the local Calgary flickr group looking for a westcott apollo softbox to borrow if someones got one kicking around.