Originally posted by runswithsizzers I have no experience with setting up lighting, but I have taken a lot photos of cars in museums. One of the biggest problems I've seen is specular hot spots on the shiny paint (mostly reflections of the spot lights used in the museum). I try to move my angle around to reduce the worst of them
Originally posted by clackers The pros remove those in post, standard routine in that line of work.
It is better to eliminate those points of specularity in the first place, post processing is a necessary evil with all forms of commercial photography. Relying on PP when you can achieve excellent results in camera in the first place is preferable.
Originally posted by normhead His solution, a white tent big enough to drive the trucks into, Huge banks of rented lights positioned outside the tent using the tent as a huge diffuser.
This is pretty much how you do it.
Use Big Light diffusers! as they reduce spectacular reflections - I have worked with softboxes bigger than most cars when I have done commercial automotive photography, At one point I used an aircraft hangar to photograph a cut away jet.
A simpler approach (and less expensive) is using Bounce flash - all you need is a large white (or near white) surface, ceilings are very useful here. Big softboxes are extortionately expensive. Avoid un-diffused direct illumination at all costs, as it will only increase specularity. As mentioned above: Polarisers cannot remove reflections from metallic surfaces but the polarisers effect upon glass windows,tyres and other non-metal surfaces on a car cannot be ignored.