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The front end is inspired by the technology of modern-day Formula 1: The hood is dominated by the sweeping arrow-shaped nose section; behind the ‘twin-fin’ front wing is a networked system of air intakes which help to cool the engine and brakes while the spoiler underneath enhances aerodynamic down force; the passenger cell is moved way back beyond its usual position.

The five-speed automatic transmission with AMG SPEEDSHIFT R gearshift control offers three different shift programs: ‘M’ for manual, ‘S’ for sports mode and ‘C’ for a comfort setting. In manual mode, drivers can shift -the buttons are arranged on the reverse side of the steering wheel – without taking their hands off the wheel.

Graphic design house and 360-degree photography specialists steinzeit-mediendesign, of Dusseldorf, Germany, were hired to shoot object and panorama VRs of the SLR McLaren in June 2003. The VRs are used on the Mercedes-Benz website and on a micro-site during the IAA motorshow in Frankfurt.

steinzeit-mediendesign founder and designer Peggy Stein says they had only a very rough briefing from the agency before the shoot. Around the same time, her design house was also doing a shoot for the Sprinter James Cook and she found the circumstances surrounding the two shoots as different as the cars themselves. “One car was very sexy, very small, and very important with security and art directors, while the other car was very big, homelike, with props and relaxed contact people who trust our work”, she says.

The interior was shot in one day; the 108 exterior views were shot on the second day (and night), and the 24 views for the door animation on the third day. Post processing was finished ten days later and 7 GB of data files were delivered to the agency. steinzeit-mediendesign received the contract for the shoot through Gaukler Studios in Stuttgart, who work directly with DaimlerChrysler Germany, and the Springer & Jacobi agency in London.

Shooting the McLaren presented some challenges: a real shadow was required under the car so they had to think about the floor covering of the turntable; the SLR has less ground clearance than most cars so they had to calculate beforehand if they could move it onto a 17 cm high turntable; and the door animation was requested after the shoot was completed. Luckily, Peggy had made accommodations for such late-stage changes: “I checked the space around the car before in order to have enough room for such a ‘customer’s additional idea’ because I couldn’t change the three points of view later, otherwise the door animation wouldn’t fit into the rotation.”

The customer also wanted 36 images for each row, although in Peggy’s opinion it’s preferable to use numbers divisible by four and the half of that number should also be divisible by four, allowing for the creation of a smaller movie with every second image without missing one of the important axes.

Below, Peggy Stein provides a breakdown of the shoot.

Duration: 2nd - 6th June 2003

Schedule:
02.06: Interior Shooting
05.06: Stage construction, light arrangement for the exterior shooting
05.06/06: Exterior shooting, door animation

June 2nd: Interior Shooting

Equipment:
- a SpheroCam - a digital Roundshot camera produced by SpheronVR AG in combination with a Nikon fisheye-lens
- Manpower by 2 Assistants

Resolution:
- it is the normal resolution we work with: 6250 x 3125 pixel in 16 Bit RGB (while using a fisheye-lens)
- the highest resolution the camera delivers: 10600 x 5300 pixel in 16 Bit RGB (while using a fisheye-lens)

Explanation:
For a 360I car photo shooting we mainly use a fisheye lens which allows us to image 97% of the entire room. The remaining 3% - the place at which the camera is located during the shooting - will be retouched away in the picture editing process. The advantage of taking full spheric pictures is to receive a complete image of a room or place and being able to select one or more relevant pieces of information out of the whole image for further processing/use.

I can use all kinds of Nikon lenses on the camera, but in most cases I use the fisheye-lens, that way I can image almost all of the room and I can decide later what to use or what to cut out. Some customers specifically want cylindrical images in order to not confuse the users with the unlimited movement to the ceiling and the floor. But, even in those cases it is better to use a spherical image and set the limit of the vertical fields of vision in the QTVR-movie at a later time. In the end cubical projected movies always look better and smoother than cylindrical projected movies.

Using the fisheye lens in the SLR shooting also was most useful, since taking a picture from a minimum vertical shooting angle would not have allowed the lower located seats to be seen on the image. Since the camera spins around while scanning its environment, a complete image strip directly evolves.

Generally, more then 360I are being taken in order to allow a blend from the beginning to the end. This job the camera software does itself during the post processing.

One shoot takes 20-30 minutes, provided the studio light has been set-up and checked in advance. It is common to take a number of pictures with different light exposures to allow a perfect final image to be created. A final image might be the result of combining all or some of those differently exposed pictures with one another. In most cases we work with diffused indirect lights. The windows of the car are covered with Nfrost-foil and reflected light comes in. Special areas were pointed out with small spots. Due to the time required to set up the studio and equipment, the long-lasting light exposure time and the car cleaning, one to three interior shoots can be realized on one shooting day.

The pictures taken are raw data that have to run through a processing job that is integrated in the camera software. The 16-Bit pictures with an embedded color profile are then ready for further processing. The next steps are to select and retouch the pictures (later only if necessary). The background and other disturbing materials have to be exempted. (Since January 2004, Photoshop CS allows us to go on working with the 16-bit images and we will try to keep the image in 16-bit as long as possible.)

If not otherwise agreed upon, we deliver two image strips of one shoot (one in the original size and the other in the size needed for the production of a QuickTime VR Movie) and one QuickTime VR Movie. The movie will be tuned according to the customer’s requirements.

June 5th/6th (meanwhile, a Sprinter James Cook was shot)

Task: Exterior Shooting.
Dynamic, powerful, sporty and aggressive look; rich in contrast; wide-angle-lens-effect

Equipment:
- a Canon DS1 - with a Canon wide-angle-lens
- turntable (diameter 6000 mm, height 170 mm, delivered by hsw turntable)
- special white floor in order to get the actual shadow under the car
- Manpower of 2 Assistants

Resolution:
4012 x ca. 3000 pixel in 8 Bit RGB (I normally use a smaller resolution, because in most cases I produce for internet-presentations, only)

I attempt to always find the right mixture between a most suitable resolution that offers enough scope for further processing and large representation, and the therein resulting data size and processing time required for the planned inset.

Explanation:
Prior to the shooting it was necessary to order the turntables and it was important to consider that the SLR has got a rather low trim height. That meant we had to calculate whether the height of the stage and the type of ramps offered enough space for the car, so that it would not don onto the stage or be visually absorbed by it.

The set-up of the turntable takes up about four to five hours since it has to be leveled out to the ground. This time has to be considered for a realistic time scheduling of the shooting. Since the set-up of the turntable is so time consuming, it was done the evening before the actual shooting on 4th June. Consequently, first thing we did on 5th June was the light setting. Before the build up of the stage we defined a center line which runs through the whole studio and, at a later time, will become the zero point (place of origin - 0I) of the rotation, the middle point of the stage and the location of the camera.

The disposition of the stage - in this case the customers wanted it to be 36 steps - is carried out with help of a laser beam. Usually, we drive the cars - also vans and trucks - onto the stage. With the SLR it was different. There was additional security and a special driver.

When the car stood on the stage, we defined the focal length, the location of the camera and the three different recording heights.

The SLR-exterior shooting is a so called NMultirow shooting where each of the 36 horizontal and all of the three vertical positions refer to each other. This has to be taken into consideration right at the beginning of the procedure. In order to allow a time effective shooting, the images were shot in a vertical arrangement of the three visual foci. That means the camera (fixed on a trolley) was moved from one vertical shooting position to another and we used three single fixed tripods for each view. After the three visual foci with different heights have been recorded, the camera was turned to the next position. Three different tripods were used for the three shooting heights, and the camera was moved to and from the positions.

This strategy was most suitable for the light setting, which the Art Director agreed upon. At the same time a reference point was shot, after which all other shots will be assimilated and adjusted to each other and focused on. This alignment meant a two hour production time and was carried out by us.

When deciding upon the format it must be considered at the beginning that:

(a) all of the 36 positions of the rotation, all 3 vantage points and all door animations up to the room spanned shoot of the door must be completely open
(b) that all of them must fit into the format without changing the pitch or the focal length, since otherwise it would mean they are no longer compatible.

Hence, there always has to be enough space around the vehicle.

Only after all visual foci have been determined, the light setting could be started. To find a light setting suitable for 132 shoots was time consuming - there is no ideal light setting for that many angles and it's naive to believe there is ONE ideal light setting for that many angles. Finally, we were ready to take the first shoots at 18:00 hours on 5th June.

For a vertical row including camera changeover to different positions, exposure-series and movement of the revolving stage we needed an average time of 10 minutes per position. That is not much time. If you calculate this time by 132 positions, it will result in 360 minutes, hence, 6 hours. Because we were keen on finishing off the exterior shooting on this day, we were determined to stay in the studio and keep on working until 4 o‘clock in the morning.

On 6th June all we had to do was the door animation. The folding doors opened and closed at variable speed. Consequently, we artificially had to create inter-stages. Firstly, we thought about how many stages would be appropriate. After that we took a thread to measure the longer side - with a wide open door. We split the thread into 7, unequally long parts and cut it into 7 two-wired threads (one for each door). The doors were then put in various positions being held by the threads. Since it was not necessary to use a thread for the open position, these shoots were also used to erase the threads in the other shoots - they where retouched away.

The shooting was finished at 4 p.m. Up to this time it was not clear yet, whether the customer wanted additional shoots to be taken or not. We felt relieved when the go for the dismantling of the set finally came through. After all, a whole week shooting in daylight and working at night sapped our energy and we could not wait for the weekend to start.

Within five days the shots were processed, masked and set into different backgrounds. Seven GB data were delivered to one agency. On 25th June we received a letter from another agency stating that they would question the quality of the shoots and the data received. Among others it was said that:

- the light was too rich in contrast and that it was not suitable for coloration (which was not an issue in the initial order and briefing ever, anyway)
- the turning was not firm
- the focal length was wrong, principally never wide-angle-lens
- data were to small

The agency offered DaimlerChrysler a costly retouching of the data and the shoots though it should be of common sense that neither the data size nor the focal length would be influenced by a simple retouching. That left me with the assumption that the imputations were of pure political nature, since the agency could not sustain a sruting. Unfortunately, such judgment of a competitive agency is not good for the image and one has to raise the stake to prove the authors statement wrong and convince the customer, who usually does not have the technical background, about the opposite.

We produced a second statement and ever since never ever again have heard from this case again. In retrospect, I found out that the opponent agency was the one I worked for once before - I was asked by them to set HotSpots Movies into a cubic movie, since they were not capable of doing those themselves. The agency has had numerous orders from the vehicle sector and I suppose they were afraid to lose contracts. Maybe that is why they depreciated my work. Nevertheless, I stress the fact that these are only assumptions.

After all, it was a wonderful order. We had lots of fun and I would be very pleased to stay in business with the company. Otherwise, there still are numerous vans and trucks around, hopefully waiting for us to make them up.

Comment:
I notice how when you zoom in the picture quality is relatively the same. Pretty good! I was planning to go back to the auto show mainly to get more pictures of this car but I have what I need now to make a skin. Well, maybe I'll still go back. Nothin like sitting in a SLR
Email: mail@steinzeit-mediendesign.de