shooting metal and chrome surfaces?

[vicgin]

I have been lurking around this fantastic forum for quite a while now and have never posted. The knowledge and expertise packed into the wonderful personalities of you posters has been truly a masterly education. Keep it up I am having a ball learning from all of you.

My question is this. When shooting metallic surfaces (specifically chrome accessories on mechanical engines, cars etc.) outdoors, I can't seem to capture the sparkle of the surface just right. I get close with either an ambient or spot with my meter, but no cigar. Tried color trans. and b/w. Tried a polarizer with each on some shots. Just not happy.

Another approach to this challenge is most welcome.

Regards to all,
Herbert Blount

[Ron Marshall]

A great book that deals with all aspects of light and reflections from all types of surfaces, which I highly recommend, is Light Science and Majic by Fil Hunter and Paul ?Faqua.

[Walter Calahan]

Metal, especially chrome, needs a big wide light source.

Usually for car photography, the pros will use web roll paper you can get at a printing plant. They usually have plenty of end of rolls to sell or give away.

You want to set up the paper outside your shot, but close enough to kick either the ambient light, or your own strobes or hot lights, into the car.

This will give a beautiful sheen without harsh specularities.

Metal simply needs reflected light, not directional light.

Hope that helps.

[David A. Goldfarb]

With reflective surfaces, you're photographing the reflection, so to get a clean reflection you need to set up a clean surface for the reflective object to reflect. This might be seamless white paper, foamcore, fabric, etc.

At the same time you want to give the object shape, so you might use black tape, black cards, or black paper to be reflected in the surface of the object. For instance, you might surround the object in white paper and add strips of black tape to outline the object in an attractive way.

It can be tricky to set this up, so you always want to be checking to see what the shot looks like in the camera.

Outdoors, the immediate surroundings are usually just too cluttered to produce good reflections. Sometimes you might be able to use something in the environment in a reflection, like a vivid and simple street graphic, but it's hard to find the right thing in the right place.

[Frank Petronio]

Which is why you used to see a lot of car shots done out on dry lake beds at sun up or sun set.

Nowadays most cars are shot in the studio or rendered from a 3D model and dropped into a stock background. Some of the ads are very obvious - better than a Syrian photojournalist but not by much.

[Ed K.]

I'm not one of those experts, but a few thoughts anyway:

The book recommendation is excellent.

If one thinks in terms of reflective efficiency, with a mirror getting close to 100%, chrome and shiney things often work that way - almost perfectly reflective, as a mirror.

At times, you'll need your billiards skills to work out the angles of where things are as the lights and image bounce around. Many say "you light the reflection", thus create the image or lighting in the area that appears in the reflection.

Variances in the light and dark can help too. You can put a large card to bound off of, or use a large softbox, however dramatic effects are created sometimes by simply changing the position of a black card in that field to shape a nice sexy line or break in the chrome.

The biggest real problems come up with what are often curved surfaces. They act as fisheyes, or rather, curved mirrors, which can end up reflecting most of the objects around them including your camera. This is why people use the desert, or build tents, baffles and all sorts of things. The book mentioned above really does justice to explaining all of this.

In extreme cases, people "cheat" with dulling spray, certain hair colorants and so on. These can dull part of a curved chrome surface enough to mask some things, however of course, as dull means scattering the light, the effect is not often what you want ( pewter instead of chrome look ).

[Bruce Watson]

A great book that deals with all aspects of light and reflections from all types of surfaces, which I highly recommend, is Light Science and Majic by Fil Hunter and Paul ?Faqua.

I'll give a strong second to that.

[vicgin]

Thanks for the suggestions.
Ordered the book.
Got to come up with something better than dry lake beds or Syrian photojournalists.

Thanks to all

[Ted Harris]

You mentioned trying a polarizer in your original post. One of the things the book will discuss in detail is the use of and effect of polarizing light. What you need to do here is polarize your light source, e.g. use a polarized gel over your light(s), not a polarizing filter on your lens.