How to Photograph a Car in a Studio

A car is the hardest thing you will put on a cove, and not because of its size. It is a mirror on wheels. Every light, stand, flag and crew member in the room turns up somewhere in the paintwork, so photographing a car in a studio is less about lighting the car than deciding what the car gets to reflect.

The studio gives you everything else: no weather, no sun sliding across the bonnet, no passers-by in the windows, and a seamless infinity cove with no corner to retouch out. This is how to plan the shoot, from getting the vehicle in to the last composite.

Before the car arrives: what to ask the studio

Most car-shoot problems are access problems, and every one of them is cheaper to solve by email than in the yard on the morning. Ask any studio these before you book:

• The route from the road to the cove: door width and height, any turns, kerbs or ramps, and whether the car is driven or pushed onto the floor.
• The floor: whether the cove needs protecting, and what happens if a tyre marks it.
• Engines and fuel: whether an engine may run indoors at all, and any rules on fuel levels or electric vehicles.
• Time: whether moving the car on and off the cove comes out of your booked hours.

At Scope the room is Studio A: 1,200 sq ft, a white drive-in infinity cove and full blackout curtains. Crews park in the yard and come in through the roller door; load-in is at ground level, with no stairs and no lift between the yard and Studio A. Door, cove and ceiling measurements are on request, so send the vehicle's make, model and dimensions with the enquiry and we will confirm the access route works for it. Set-up and pack-down sit inside the booked time, so count getting the car on and off the cove as part of the hours you book.

Cars are mirrors: light the reflections, not the paint

Glossy paint shows you very little of itself. What you see on the body is the room: the ceiling across the roof and bonnet, the walls and floor down the flanks. So the lighting question is not where to point a light but what each panel should reflect.

• Put one very large soft source above the car, an overhead silk or scrim as close to the size of the car as you can manage, so the roof and bonnet read as one clean, unbroken highlight.
• Run long strip sources along the sides to draw a single highlight line down each flank. Raise or lower the strip and the line moves up or down the side; set it where it traces the shoulder of the car.
• Shape comes from dark as much as light. Large black flags or black cloth placed where a panel reflects them put dark bands into the paint, and those bands are what show the curves. A car with nothing dark in its reflections looks flat.
• Look into the paint from the camera position before every frame. Stands, the tripod, the crew and anyone in a white T-shirt will all be in it somewhere.
• A circular polariser cuts reflections in glass and painted panels, does little for chrome, and changes strength with the angle of each panel, so no single setting suits the whole car. It also costs you light.

White cove or dark background?

A white cove gives the clean, catalogue look, with a side effect: all that white reflects in the paint, which brightens the body and can flatten its shape, so the black flags matter more on white, not less. For a dark look, black the room out and keep light off the wall, and the same white cove falls away to grey or near black; the flagging that takes is in how to light a cyclorama.

The catch with a car is scale. The big soft sources it needs spill onto the wall, so a true black takes distance and hard flagging, and a deep grey is the easier win. Studio A has full blackout curtains around its white cove, so both looks come from one room on one day.

Camera height, lens and the details that give a car away

Lens choice changes the car's proportions. A wide lens close to the front stretches whatever is nearest, so the grille grows and the rear shrinks; a longer lens from further back keeps the car looking like the car, which is why car photographers step back and zoom in. That needs floor behind the camera as well as around the car, so work out your camera positions before the day and include them when you ask about the room.

Height is the other dial. A low camera, around headlight height, makes a car look planted and powerful; a higher one shows the lines of the roof and bonnet. Find it, then lock the tripod off.

• Turn the front wheels so the face of the wheel, not the tread, points towards the camera.
• Set the logos on the wheel centres upright before you lock off. Car people notice when they are not.
• Clean the tyres before they roll onto the cove, then clean the bodywork again once the car is in position. Soft light shows every fingerprint and speck of dust.
• Headlights and interior lights left on for hours drain a battery, so bring a jump pack.

Shooting it panel by panel

The best studio car images are rarely one exposure. No single lighting setup puts the right reflection on every panel at once, so the usual approach is to lock the camera, keep the car still, and shoot a series of frames, each lit for one part of the car: a flank, the bonnet, the wheels, the glass. The frames are blended in post into one image where every panel has its best light.

It is also how a modest kit lights a large car, because one soft source moved between frames can do the work of several. It only works if nothing moves but the light, so weight the tripod, fire the camera remotely, and check each frame at full size on a laptop as you go rather than at the end.

Filming a car in the studio

Video trades the composite for movement, and in a studio the movement comes from the light and the camera, because the car is not going anywhere. A light moved steadily along the body sends its reflection travelling across the paint, which reads as motion with the car parked. A slow slider or dolly move does something similar: as the camera travels, the reflections slide over the curves and the shape reveals itself.

A moving camera sees the room from more angles, so everything in the reflections section counts double. Anything that needs the engine running or the car moving under its own power is a question for the studio before the day, not on it. Shoot under continuous light and check for flicker before you roll, with the shutter and frame rate from camera settings for studio shooting.

Booking the room

Studio A books in two-hour, half-day and full-day blocks at £160, £320 and £620, and getting the car in and out comes out of those hours, so a car shoot is rarely a two-hour job. The room in full is on the drive-in studio page, and what studio hire actually costs works through the blocks. Lights are charged separately from the room, so please enquire about our lights, and you will need appropriate insurance cover in place for the production, which we may ask to see; the booking guide explains the rest.