I've knocked up a wee iPhone / iPad app, to finish it off i need to do the graphics. It shows a car on an invisible carousel and you spin it 360 degrees. So i need to take photos of a car from all 360 degrees (probably in 15 degree steps / 24 positions), and at each 15 degree step i want to shoot it from ~5 heights which would allow you to also rotate the view up and down in the app as well as left and right.

I've never done a shoot like this before, i'm a very inexperienced photographer. I'm looking for pointers on a couple of things.

Background Felt

The "studio" is a local car trader's show room, he has an electric carousel that will need to be edited out. I plan to lay down a green felt over it, separately the floor will be green felt too. The background isn't useable so it'll be a green screen behind the car too. Whats the cheapest way to get hold of tons of green felt, or a suitable substitute?

Lighting

I want a flourescent light strip reflection off the car - as you would see in real life, but all other light should be diffuse. There's a light strip on the roof of the showroom so that's easy, but the colour temperature is miles away from the flash lights (only 2 of them, will this be enough? I know the answer already eh :-) i have access to. Am i better renting studio lights? Will it matter? Should i be trying to fill with solid lighting or mostly flash triggered?

Camera Mount

I want to shoot from a few heights - i can mark my tripod at various heights to be able to reproduce the heights for each rotation of the carousel, but is there a cheap way i could rig up some form of arc shape to move the camera up and down? Ideally i'd like the camera to arc with height, with the arc rooted in the centre of the car, i just can't think how to measure that out reliably and mount it, i'm thinking the plain tripod method might turn out crap and unusable.

I've got a small budget to spend on this but this isn't a commercial thing it will never pay back so i don't want to blow too much on what is really just a wee hobby.

P.s. the car in the photoshoot is an Octavia Vrs :-)

Background Felt

The "studio" is a local car trader's show room, he has an electric carousel that will need to be edited out. I plan to lay down a green felt over it, separately the floor will be green felt too. The background isn't useable so it'll be a green screen behind the car too. Whats the cheapest way to get hold of tons of green felt, or a suitable substitute?

Camera Mount

I want to shoot from a few heights - i can mark my tripod at various heights to be able to reproduce the heights for each rotation of the carousel, but is there a cheap way i could rig up some form of arc shape to move the camera up and down? Ideally i'd like the camera to arc with height, with the arc rooted in the centre of the car, i just can't think how to measure that out reliably and mount it, i'm thinking the plain tripod method might turn out crap and unusable.

I'm looking forward to seeing the end results.

As to your questions, why not try a snooker table recovering company who may be able to help out with some old baize lengths that could be utilised?

The tripod really needs to be substantial and one such as a Slik Professional would allow you to reach higher than most other tripods. If you fit a mini laser pointer to the mount then you could aim it at the same central part of the car as a 'quick fix' method. Mark out the spots on the circumference that you will be shooting from and then do all the bottom level ones before adjusting the tripod height and angle for the next batch.

Thanks John, good shout with the laser pointer.

Arranged for next week so will post a link to the finished article then. Just added in a daft wee feature to allow you to spec a drop on coil overs, but I don't need extra photos for that.

Trying to figure out how to do cut away graphics, I'd like to show something visually if you choose upgraded ARBs etc.