FAQS

In our experience, 95 per cent of dealers go for a 4.5m diameter turntable, which will accommodate most UK domestic vehicles, including SUVs and long-wheelbase luxury cars.

Our 6.6m turntable tends to be used where LWB vans are going to photographed, or where there is a preference not to see the turntable clearance gap in the images.

As stated above, a 4.5m turntable will accommodate the footprint of most non-commercial vehicles.

However, there will be some overhang on the larger cars/SUVs, so there needs to be a clearance area around the turntable of no less than 1m.

Therefore, the minimum area for a turntable should no less than 6.6m x 6.6m.

If the turntable is set into a platform, there also needs to be extra space to allow for a ramp measuring 2.4m wide by 1.8m long.

Finally, there needs to be an allowance for ensuring the camera can be positioned at least 6.3m from the centre of the turntable.

A flush-fit turntable will vary in depth depending on the top finish, between 179mm and 233mm overall.

A turntable set into a platform will typically be between 179mm and 214mm deep.

Regardless of whether it is a stand alone turntable or a fully automated photo booth, the power requirement remains the same:

13amp dedicated supply via a 16amp RCBO breaker.

The top finish is subjective as it will impact the aesthetics of your images.

However, it is not only the aesthetics that are important but also how robust the finish is given that it is going to be driven over consistently.

Have a look at the finishes section on our Premium Car Turntables page for the options available.

Where a turntable is being used in a commercial environment, we would recommend that an annual service is part of your housekeeping programme. The price of a service is £275.00 plus VAT.

Email our support desk to arrange a mutually convenient time and date.

External turntables for photography are an option, but the motivation for installing a photographic turntable is usually to bring consistency to the dealership images, and this is often not feasible in an outside space that is exposed to daylight levels and inclement weather conditions.

Photographic booths are an internal construction and need to be housed in a weatherproof building.

A new building dedicated to car photography should have an internal space of 10m x 8m, with an eaves height of no less than 4m.

A building for photographing vans should have an internal space of 10m x 10m minimum, with an eaves height of no less than 5m.

• 13 Amp single-socket outlet (or fused spur) on its own 16amp RCBO. This should be situated in the area where the control panel is to be positioned (to be discussed prior to installation).
• Flush-fit installations (where the turntable is to be set in concrete) require a 40mm conduit with drawstring to run from the motor housing pit to the operator’s position.
• Concrete pad (flat, smooth and level), which the turntable motor housing, centre bearing (530mm circle) and roller carrier tracks (1940mm to 2040mm from the centre for a 4.5m model and 1150mm to 1250mm and 2925mm to 3025mm from the centre for the two-tracked 6.6m model) sit on. These should be avoided when planning drainage for external installations.
• Internet connectivity.

UKT360 are not lighting experts. However, we have many years of experience when it comes to providing a ‘one-stop’ solution for photo booths.

If you employ the services of a lighting expert to light your booth, expect to pay in excess of £10k – a figure based on some clients’ past experiences – for results that often don’t match up to the price tag.

Our lighting guidelines are as follows:

• Light the vehicle from the front and sides.
• Avoid using direct light from above, such as fluorescent light batons, as these will reflect badly in the screen and bonnet.
• A translucent stretch ceiling with the right lighting above it will give good results but can be expensive.
• We use either LED flood lights or an illuminated stretch ceiling in our own configurated booths, and we can show the results.
• Any bespoke set-up will be trial and error with the end result, so think twice before going off at a tangent from this advice.
• Lighting a vehicle while being rotated through 360 degrees will always be a challenge, but we have a head-start.

This is a fairly common question as dealerships tend to be a moving target when it comes to buildings and available space.

We have designed a ‘drop-in’ booth specifically to address this problem.

It can be built in an existing building in less than a week, has a robust steel-framed construction incorporating our 6.6m turntable and has full functionality as far as our 360 image offerings are concerned.

It can be totally dismantled, re-sited and re-built to save you the cost of scrapping off walls, etc. that have been built into the infrastructure of a building.

The general rule of thumb we have adopted for our car dealership photo booths is a distance of 6.3m from the centre of the turntable to the camera position. This enable us to use an 18-55mm lens and ensures we can get all vehicles suited to that booth in the frame.

Van booths have to be much larger to accommodate not only the vehicles but also the camera, which has to be much further away.  A typical photo booth capable of photographing LWB vans would need to be 10m x 10m in area.

Our camera control software has been designed and written around the Canon platform. This means the fixed camera in the booth must be a Canon camera.

We use a Canon M6 MK2.

The camera used for capturing the handheld images – alloy wheels, etc. – can be a make of your choice, but we would typically supply a Canon M50.

Yes, you can.

However, we recommend you use the computer that comes as part of our automation pack. Our computer is safely built into the control panel, pre-loaded with the right software and ready to go.

If you should use your own computer, it will need to have a Windows 10 operating system and be totally dedicated to the photo booth.

Option 3 of dealer360™ automatically takes eight external images and provides the option of taking as many handheld images as required.

Option 3 of dealer360™ will usually take less than three minutes to complete a sequence.

Of course, this is dependent on how many handheld images are taken.

With Option 3 of dealer360™, all images are owned and stored by you.

You can choose what you want to do with them.

There are no ongoing image handling costs for Option 3.

With Option 3 of dealer360™, there is the option to have images sent to a designated network drive.

Option 4 of dealer360™ generates fully interactive 360 images which are stored on the UKT360 cloud platform and released to clients websites via our 360 plugin player.

There is a cost per vehicle for this service, starting at £2.85 per vehicle and reducing based on quantity.

Option 4 of dealer360™ automatically takes 72 4K external images and provides the option of taking as many handheld images as required, plus an internal panoramic 360 image.

Option 4 of dealer360™ will usually take less than five minutes to complete a dual sequence (doors open and doors closed).

Of course, this is dependent on how many handheld images are taken.

With Option 4 of dealer360™, all images are owned by you.

A full set of images is stored both locally on the booth computer and on UKT360’s cloud storage facility.

The local images can be used by yourselves, while the cloud-based images are fed to your website 360 player.

Yes, we can. With Option 4 of dealer360™, we offer a comprehensive service.

The images are available to be viewed via the 360 player on your website within 15 minutes of the vehicle having been photographed.

AIVO360 is an easy-to-use app that creates and publishes professional video adverts using AI voiceover and the same Auto Trader integration that has made dealer360™ such a success.

It aims to level the playing field in the world of used vehicle photography, understanding the space and budget restraints that prevent some dealerships from investing in a full booth.

More information about AIVO360 and how it works can be found on the AIVO360 page, including further FAQs under the “more information” section.