The Jaguar E-type...

A couple of weeks ago we spent a few hours with Clive from Lancashire Classic Jaguar Hire shooting his beautiful E-type Jaguar. It was a cold and cloudy day but we managed to get some really dramatic shots..after all, the car looks stunning!

Some info on the car from Clive...

At 4.30pm March 15th 1961 the road going E-Type was launched at the Geneva Motorshow. 

Jaguar took 500 orders at the show alone. At launch the car sold for about £2,095.00 the equivalent of £38,000.00 in today's money. The E-type was less than half the price of an Aston Martin and Ferrari, but neither could reach its record breaking speed of - 150 mph

On its release in March 1961 Enzo Ferrari called it: "The most beautiful car ever made" 

The XK engine was also known as the XK6 engine

The Series 1 Jaguar E-type was introduced, initially for export only, in March 1961. The domestic market launch came four months later in July 1961. The cars at this time used the triple SU carburetted 3.8 litre six-cylinder Jaguar XK6 engine from the XK150S

The 3.8-litre version was released in 1958, initially for the last of the XK150s and the Mark IX saloon

The cylinderhead center section is always painted a certain colour on Jaguar classic cars this tells you which version of the cylinder head is fitted. The E-type series has a straight port head.

The engine is a very popular Jaguar race car engine in their day Jaguar MkIX were raced as was the XK150s..


Almost all of the shots were lit with 3 lights....a strip soft-box on an Elinchrom  Ranger quadra A head at about 80% power and we also used a couple of Nikon Speed-lights for the details and filling in shadows. All were triggered from the camera using the PocketWizard Flex system and the AC 3 zone controller.
I tried to keep the shutter speed as high as possible to underexpose the sky and use the lights to fill in. I built up the lights by setting and committing to the position I was going to shoot from, getting the ambient exposure I wanted, the added the lights on one at a time. When the first light was right, I turned it off to set the second and so on. Then, when they were all set, I put them all back on and i had my shot. It was good because I wasn't making loads of exposures, normally just 3 of each shooting position.

The detail shots we all lit with just one light, the strip soft-box, and the Elinchrom Ranger Quadra head on full power (I think!)at around 1/200th of a second and f22, getting the light fall off to black.


Here are a few favourite images from the day along with a video of the complete collection...the video is full HD so please be patient and let it load at 720....