Photographing The RS200 in Barrow, Cumbria : I dare say there are a good few exclamations of “Ooooo” when this image is first seen. Not really surprising, as the RS200 was quite an iconic car.
The brief was submitted by a classic and specialist car auction company, which are a long standing client of mine. The brief entailed a lot of detail shots, interior, exterior, engine bay, boot, walkround video etc. Last of all, some “Hero” shots. Now, it’s the hero shots that I’m particularly interested in, and it’s these images that tend to attract the interest on the auction site. It was also this style of imagery on my site that have attracted this and similar clients.
And why are the hero shots of particular interest to me? Well, I get to play with my lights!
The OM Systems E-M1X lends itself really well to automotive work for a number of reasons, not least the advantage of depth of field. As an example, f8 on the micro four thirds (M43) system, has an equivalent depth of field as f16 on a full frame camera. This allows greater flexibility regarding my location lights. It also gives me greater headroom for increasing the aperture for much larger vehicles such as lorries and buses, where depth of field can make or break an image. In all honesty, a lot of my automotive work is shot at f5.6 without any issue.
Anyway, let’s get back to the shoot at hand. I tend to get everything done and dusted before finally getting around to sorting the lit hero shots. There’s a couple of reasons for leaving them till last. I get a “feel” for the car and I’m also more relaxed as I don’t feel the pressure of having to get specific shots, angles and everything else listed in the brief. It’s just me, my lights and an image I have in mind that I want to bring to life.
To that end, lets break down the top image of the car…
I prefer a HDR approach to my automotive work, as it allows a broader dynamic range and greater detail within shadows and highlights. Now, you may be squinting a little at the above line, wondering how the hell you manage HDR with lights, when bracketed sequences are usually done via varying the shutter speed. But… You can’t go over the x-synch speed without getting a shutter shadow across the bottom (or top) of your frame. X-synch typically maxes out at 1/250th sec on most cameras, although Canon tends to favour 1/200th on a lot of theirs. Olympus/OM state 1/250th but after testing, I found I could push it to 1/320th with no evidence of the shutter impacting on the image.
That said, you are still not going to have the headroom for bracketing with five images on shutterspeed. Something else you need to bear in mind is the fact that the shutterspeed affects the ambient lighting, and not the location flash lighting, which means we wouldn’t really get a bracketed sequence. The car would be lit to the same level throughout all five exposures.
We can’t really bracket using the aperture. Yes, it would affect the exposure as a whole, both ambient and lights, but it would give you some pretty funky depth of field goings on over a five stop difference in exposure.
So, what do we have left? ISO would affect the whole exposure and give us the range of exposures required. Now, in the Olympus/ OM, I take my “standard” exposure at an ISO of 200, followed by 64, 100, 400 & 800. This gives me (almost!) five stops across the range. ISO64 is lowest I can go, but at 2/3rd of a stop lower than ISO100, I find it’s enough for taming highlights anyway.
And on to the lighting…
I placed an Elinchrom ELB500 frame left, and straight on to the car. The head was about sevenfeet high and firing through a high intensity reflector. The output was set to 5.0 (Equivalent to 200Ws).
A second ELB500 was placed frame right, firing directly towards the side of the car. Again, it was about seven feet high and firing through a high intensity reflector at an output of 5.0 (Equivalent to 200Ws).
Using my E-M1X, my base exposure was 1/50th sec, f8 and ISO200. The camera was on a tripod at a similar height to the door mirrors. Rather than use a cable release and make manual adjustments to the ISO, I made use of the OM app. This allows me to control the camera remotely, making adjustments without having to touch the camera and risk movement.
I took a totl of five images at ISO200, 64, 100, 400 & 800.
I utilise Lightroom for the initial blend, as I find the result to be quite reserved, so I don’t get that fearful retinal burn associated with some HDR programs. I then take the image in to Photoshop nd manually blend any areas that aren’t quite up to scratch.
Finally, I add areas of increased contrast, usually to the foreground and background, along with a subtle vignette, adding a little more punch and pulling the viewer’s eye to the vehicle itself.
This last image is actually the reason for my choice of aperture being f8. I wanted the old monastery walls to be quite crisp, as their rough and rugged nature was in direct contrast to the ultra smooth surface of the RS200. I would normally have chosen f5.6 for a vehicle of this size.
Oh, and a bit of a footnote….
The car is actually a superbly executed kit car conversion.
My automotive portfolio can be found at : focalpointpro.co.uk
