Outdoor Shadows what to do?
 

I have a weekly car show shoot that is done outdoors. The cars drive up one at a time with talent out in front. The way the dealership is set up and the window of time I have to shoot this (has to be in the morning before the dealership opens for business) the sun is always at side angle, thus casting a shadow on the car and the talent. We cannot cut and wait until the sun pops back out if clouds appear so I am thinking a HMI would help with this. Reflectors would do it, however due to occasional cloud cover I am wondering if a HMI wold be more consistant. I need to light just the car and the talent..any suggestions?

If it were me I'd use an HMI.

We shoot standups for our fishing show outdoors using reflector fill, and everytime the sun goes behind a cloud we're stuck waiting... We don't have an HMI.

An HMI would provide some "pop" to your shot even if the sun were obscured by clouds.

Scott,

One solution is to completely shade the area. You can get a big silk screen to cover the top of the whole shoot and provide an even soft light that will be more consistent.

Josh

A trick that can help once a silk of some sort is overhead is to hit the side of the talent's face to give some brightness without blasting too much light in their eyes. A silk can put the talent under a bit of a shadow. A silver or gold reflector off to the side will make bright highlights and give a bit of a sunset/sunrise look. You still need to get enough soft fill on their face so details are clear, but a bit of side light can make it seem brighter without roasting someone's eyeballs. A black netting on a tight frame out of focus behind the talent can bring down the background levels a bit so it doesn't blow out.

All great ideas, unfortunately when we start rolling camera's we don't stop for ANYTHING (except emergencies ie car won't start etc) and we shoot for 60 straight min. The light changes often in that amount of time. Also, a butterfly to cover that much real estate (Entire car and talent) would have to be huge in size, and adjusted while shooting. I wished the time constraints weren't there, so I can could control the light a bit better, but alas they are. So I am buying a 2k or 4k HMI. Thanks for all of the responses!