I recently took pictures of my car. Thinking about selling it soon, so I’m getting it ready.
Car photography is kind of tricky. It takes huge modifiers, and there are lots of reflections. In the end, I went the easy route. I parked outside surrounded by trees (so my reflections/shadows would match my backdrop), and started shooting just after the Sun fell below the tree line (lots of diffused light everywhere).
After I took a test shot, I found a problem: the front of my car was in the shadows.
Easy fix though, I pulled a strobe out of my bag, attached a E-TTL cord (for high-speed sync only), played around with the power (settled on 1/8 +1/3), and had Kristin hold it and point it directly at the front of my car. This opened up the grill and helped draw in the focus. Here:
As this was my first attempt, I didn’t bring any kind of light modifier, assuming anything I had would be too small to soften the light. But in retrospect, I would like to have used a small soft box or umbrella on the flash Kristin held to soften it up a little bit.
A note on using the E-TTL cord in place of radio triggers.
I chose to shoot at aperture 1.4 to cut down on some of the background distractions. Even shooting at ISO 100, I still had to have a shutter speed of 1/400. On the 5D, radio triggers can only sync as high as 1/160 – 1/200. But since my flash setup was simple, I pulled out my E-TTL sync cord (about 25′ long), and was able to use the high speed sync feature of my 580exII flash.
The E-TTL cord is a handy and small thing to carry around. In the last six months I’ve re-evaluated everything I carry in my bag. I have a ‘what’s in my bag’ post coming tomorrow.