Group Shot Lighting - Advice please

Marcus Geezer

Marcus Geezer

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Hi and hope I can be given some advice.

My standard work which I feel comfortable with tend to be small group shots, individual or couple shots and since purchase have always used one of FITP brollybox light shapers as a key and mostly the only light. I feel in my comfort zone with this.

Sooo... this weekend it looks like I need to create a small studio at an engagement party to roll 400 guests through in groups of 8 to 16 in less than an hour and just wanted to check to see that I was heading in the right direction with my technique.

Rather than use the brollybox which does a good job or directing and softening the light, was going to use two white bounce brollies, one with a 580EXII in and another with a 430EX. The 580EXII to be the key light just left of camera, and the 430EX just right as a fill. Essentially only having about a meter between the two with camera in the middle. Fill to be about 2 stops lower than key.

Am I on the correct track with this? Help appreciated.
 
Either have one light each side at the same power, which will produce very flat lighting and give everyone a fat face but which will produce very predictable results that will give the same effect with everyone or...

If you want to have a fill light, then have the key light on the camera axis, well above the camera and place the key light where a key light has to be, on the camera axis but this time a little lower than the camera, or behind the camera.
 
Garry Edwards said:
Either have one light each side at the same power, which will produce very flat lighting and give everyone a fat face but which will produce very predictable results that will give the same effect with everyone or...

If you want to have a fill light, then have the key light on the camera axis, well above the camera and place the key light where a key light has to be, on the camera axis but this time a little lower than the camera, or behind the camera.
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With a group of 16, there is no scope for creative lighting at all. Option 1 :thumbs:

Option 2 - key light fill light?? :thinking:

You will be giving those flash guns a bit of a caning if you take a few shots of each group, which you'll have to in order to get some decent expressions, so I wouldn't go above quarter power if you can help it - might not be easy if you need a higher f/number for depth of field (which you will). Should keep them cooler and speed up recycling - if they overheat you'll be stuffed for ages so I would risk higher ISO, under the circumstances. Take loads of batteries!
 
There's always the old fail safe of two strobes with stofens, one each side pointing up like bare bulbs. Light gets EVERYWHERE and you never have to worry about shadows.
 
Thanks Richard, Garry and Dean for responding.

I only have one stofen so Dean's suggestion is perhaps not my option but one I was considering with 'bare bulbs'. Wasnt sure if the light would be too harsh?

Think I'll try the option 2, being key light fill light, but will have option 1 in my locker if it doesnt seem to be evenly lighting the groups. I'm going to have a practice with this setup on Saturday just so that when I set up I can pretty much get it nailed straight away without too much fiddling.

Garry, I've read your post a few times and possibly a late post? Could you explain further please?
 
Marcus Geezer said:
Thanks Richard, Garry and Dean for responding.

I only have one stofen so Dean's suggestion is perhaps not my option but one I was considering with 'bare bulbs'. Wasnt sure if the light would be too harsh?

Think I'll try the option 2, being key light fill light, but will have option 1 in my locker if it doesnt seem to be evenly lighting the groups. I'm going to have a practice with this setup on Saturday just so that when I set up I can pretty much get it nailed straight away without too much fiddling.

Garry, I've read your post a few times and possibly a late post? Could you explain further please?[/QUOTE]
With pleasure, but I'm not sure what you want me to explain.
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Garry Edwards said:
If you want to have a fill light, then have the key light on the camera axis, well above the camera and place the key light where a key light has to be, on the camera axis but this time a little lower than the camera, or behind the camera.
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Hi Garry and thanks for posting up again. I bow down to your experience and knowledge and don't want to make any assumptions here.

Key light. On camera axis, meaning for example to camera left same distance from subject to light as camera to subject. Distance to left maybe two metres or so? Placed high as you said.

Fill Light. Low as possible and just a metre right to the camera?

Sorry if this seems basic stuff, but as said dont want to make any assumptions.
 
Marcus Geezer said:
Hi Garry and thanks for posting up again. I bow down to your experience and knowledge and don't want to make any assumptions here.

Key light. On camera axis, meaning for example to camera left same distance from subject to light as camera to subject. Distance to left maybe two metres or so? Placed high as you said.

Fill Light. Low as possible and just a metre right to the camera?

Sorry if this seems basic stuff, but as said dont want to make any assumptions.
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No. "On camera axis" means directly in line with the camera - either above, below or behind but not to one side.

As Richard says, given the number of shots you have to take in a short space of time, and your very limited equipment, you may be forced to use 'Event lighting' - 1 light of equal power each side, set at low power power and using high ISO, for this job.

But as a general principle that's awful lighting because not only is it flat and lifeless, with virutually none of the shadows that are needed to make any shot interesting, but it also makes everyone look fat.

By contrast, high level on axis lighting (on camera axis when the subject is looking directly to the camera and on subject axis when they are looking elsewhere) is a good starting point because it slims the face, creates interesting shadows and defines the shape of the face.

On axis fill is the only true fill, because a fill light has to reach every part of the subject seen by the camera, and of course if it's off to one side it can't do that and just becomes a second light, which always looks unnatural.

Hope that helps
 
Garry thanks for taking the time to explain this. Yes I have limited equipment but hope that it can cope and will consider a mix of f-stop against ISO. This gig by the way is a favour for a family friend and started off as 'would it be ok if you come and take a few photo's at our small engagement party' and has turned out to be a full indian engagement ceremony including particular ceremonies from two different castes with 400 guests.

I'm gonna give the following a go at a practice on Saturday. If I feel the results are not consistent enough for mixed group sizes I'll do the fat face version.

LightingSetupgroupshotV0.jpg
 
With big groups, I would completely forget about creative lighting and just make sure you've got plenty of soft light everywhere. Two brollies, equal power, above and either side. The last thing you want is one person casting shadows across another and you just won't have any real control over the details of positioning like that. You're looking at more of a crowd shot than a cozy family group!

F/8 for DoF and corner to corner sharpness. Pre-focus and leave it. Camera on tripod, lowish viewpoint, live view on. Know where your framing and DoF is and you never need to look at the camera, look at the group, engage them visually but keep your face close-ish to the lens because they'll probably be looking at you rather than the camera. I'd probably do it sitting down. Shoot via remote release when you can see it looks right. It's about people control.

Folks just want to see nice bright and clear pictures of themselves and friends looking good on a big and memorable occasion. Nobody will thank you for arty effects if Uncle Ahmed is lost in the shadows. Speaking of which, for darker skins you need to keep the exposure level up a bit.

I would concentrate on creating attractive groupings. Get some stools for ladies, kids on the floor, that sort of thing. Give the groups some shape, not like an ID parade. A white background or reflectors on the floor (a sheet will do) will help to put some light into those fantastic Asian dresses, and the men might be quite colourful too. Show off those outfits!
 
Marcus,this is where the bare bulb technique comes into it's own. David Hobby mentions it more than once in his DVD as a way of lighting everyone but still having definition because the light bounces everywhere and you get the slightly harder shadows from the small light source. As long as you don't have massive high ceilings and lots of coloured walls nobody can hide from the light. It might even be worth bouncing one light off the ceiling above them for a more even fill that takes care of shadows and sculpt the light with brollies.
 
If you need another stofen, make your own from a plastic milk bottle.
 
HoppyUK said:
With big groups, I would completely forget about creative lighting and just make sure you've got plenty of soft light everywhere. Two brollies, equal power, above and either side. The last thing you want is one person casting shadows across another and you just won't have any real control over the details of positioning like that. You're looking at more of a crowd shot than a cozy family group!

F/8 for DoF and corner to corner sharpness. Pre-focus and leave it. Camera on tripod, lowish viewpoint, live view on. Know where your framing and DoF is and you never need to look at the camera, look at the group, engage them visually but keep your face close-ish to the lens because they'll probably be looking at you rather than the camera. I'd probably do it sitting down. Shoot via remote release when you can see it looks right. It's about people control.

Folks just want to see nice bright and clear pictures of themselves and friends looking good on a big and memorable occasion. Nobody will thank you for arty effects if Uncle Ahmed is lost in the shadows. Speaking of which, for darker skins you need to keep the exposure level up a bit.

I would concentrate on creating attractive groupings. Get some stools for ladies, kids on the floor, that sort of thing. Give the groups some shape, not like an ID parade. A white background or reflectors on the floor (a sheet will do) will help to put some light into those fantastic Asian dresses, and the men might be quite colourful too. Show off those outfits!
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Very useful post, Richard. :)
 
The23rdman said:
Very useful post, Richard. :)
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Cheers Dean :)

The23rdman said:
Marcus,this is where the bare bulb technique comes into it's own. David Hobby mentions it more than once in his DVD as a way of lighting everyone but still having definition because the light bounces everywhere and you get the slightly harder shadows from the small light source. As long as you don't have massive high ceilings and lots of coloured walls nobody can hide from the light. It might even be worth bouncing one light off the ceiling above them for a more even fill that takes care of shadows and sculpt the light with brollies.
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Another good post :thumbs:

The bare bulb technique, basically using a Stofen or similar diffuser, does exactly what you say. It's very easy and very effective, which is why Stofens are so popular and they even come supplied as standard with some guns (Nikon?). If the environment is suitable, and it very often is with these kind of social events, pop it on, auto-TTL, point it up and bang - sorted. Absolute doddle.

The only thing I would say is that it's wasteful of light and in the OP's situation, it looks like he's pushing that already. Stofens squirt light everywhere, in the hope that it will get bounced back from somewhere - usually the ceiling. Which is just what you want, but there's just as much light going out of the sides and back, often to nowhere useful. As a rough guess, that's probably about 50% of the light wasted. Normally you can fix that with a tweak of ISO or f/number no probs.
 
Thanks again guys. I'm advised that one families colour scheme is turquoise and the other families is pink, with the hall having a very pink/turquoise colour scheme and a high ceiling. Possibly bouncing the light around to much may pick up too much colour cast so will try with the original two brolly method and if I can source a white sheet, with a sheet in front to try and reflect light onto the clothing, as suggested.

Really appreciate the input from everyone.
 
Sounds fantastic Marcus! Post some pics :)
 
I'd also forget the creative lighting! Keep it simple with NO shadows. You don't want to be PPing shadows from faces :(

Question to the more experienced, if you have the power (which OP probably doesn't), is it better to have a larger distance between the group and the light source(s) so that you don't get those subjects closest to the lights being more exposed? If the OP uses a simple setup of light each side, I'm guessing this won't be an issue. However, would I be right in thinking it would be more of an issue if using a key / fill setup?

One last thing. I've shot a couple of events similar to this (an 18th and a fashion event). One thing I worked out pretty quickly is not to underestimate the size of the groups that will suddenly appear in front of the camera. You can run out of backdrop (horizontally) quite quickly. Also make sure the backdrop is vertically sufficient for the 6’8” subject that is bound to turn up :) Just be prepared for large groups!!

Hope it all goes well!
 
Even with small strobes you can do that by feathering the light so it's pretty even across the frame. As long as you test it and tweak before hand it should be possible. Maybe even double up your flashes.
 
The23rdman said:
Even with small strobes you can do that by feathering the light so it's pretty even across the frame. As long as you test it and tweak before hand it should be possible. Maybe even double up your flashes.
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Hi Dean. Can you expand on what you mean by feathering the light please?
 
FlyTVR said:
Hi Dean. Can you expand on what you mean by feathering the light please?
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I'll draw a diagram, angon...

See, by having the light aimed at the far end of the group you get the power of that direct beam hitting them and the feathered less powerful light hitting the nearest people. This evens out over the space if you get it right.

lighting-diagram-1279303755.png
[/IMG]
 
another trick with layered groups is to aim the (key) light high so you skim the front from just lighting them, then the other rows get more of the light.

Needs some fill to light below the faces of the front row
 
FlyTVR said:
I'd also forget the creative lighting! Keep it simple with NO shadows. You don't want to be PPing shadows from faces :(

Question to the more experienced, if you have the power (which OP probably doesn't), is it better to have a larger distance between the group and the light source(s) so that you don't get those subjects closest to the lights being more exposed? If the OP uses a simple setup of light each side, I'm guessing this won't be an issue. However, would I be right in thinking it would be more of an issue if using a key / fill setup?

One last thing. I've shot a couple of events similar to this (an 18th and a fashion event). One thing I worked out pretty quickly is not to underestimate the size of the groups that will suddenly appear in front of the camera. You can run out of backdrop (horizontally) quite quickly. Also make sure the backdrop is vertically sufficient for the 6’8” subject that is bound to turn up :) Just be prepared for large groups!!

Hope it all goes well!
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In a word, yes. A bit of distance helps a lot with fall-off. It's the inverse square law of course - double the distance gives quarter the light - and that's why the OP should use two brollies as just one will probably be a couple of stops down by the time it hits the far end of the group.

With respect, I think this feathering technique is a bit of a bodge. It basically relies on the key light being uneven with a brighter centre and it's using that to put less light on the near end of the group. If you're doing it with a good and even softbox that's not going to work very well.

For more even coverage over a larger subject, moving the light back is very beneficial. The drawback is that you usually want the light as close as you can to make it softer, as size is relative to distance. So when you move it back, the rate of fall-off is reduced but the light gets harder. You have to compromise.

Plus of course the brightness is reduced (ISL again) because the light is spread over a much wider area. You can get some of that back by using a small deep reflector that delivers a much narrower pool of light, so when it's moved back it is less spread out (just like zooming the flash head). Of course, that's going to be pretty hard and much more directional though.

Just on this, when you bounce off the ceiling, the effective distance for the light is the combined distance from the flash to the ceiling and back down to the subject, which can often be double the camera to subject distance. That's another reason why bouncing the flash can be quite benign in terms of more even coverage and reduced fall-off.
 
I just thought I'd post up to conclude this after my shoot this weekend.

All I want to to say to start with is.... damn videographers... damn them to hell!

Right I feel a bit better now. At the engagement the couple sat on a stage on a settee and becuase this is where most of the ceremonies happen the video people set up two massive lights one left and one right which they insisted had to stay on all the time so any hope of me setting up my lighting was gone. These lights had harsh shadows and the colour temp was all over the place so I shot in raw and now have a few hundred shots to PP to get the colour balance corrected.

The light was usable to a certain extent, but to me I was smiling big smiles to everyone at the event, but inside just wanted to swear and cus and tell the videographers what I thought of them.
 
My sympathies re the videographers. As photographers we should never, ever let anyone else insist on anything - WE are responsible for producing good shots for our clients and must never allow anyone else to interfere with that. They have their own needs too of course, but that's their problem not ours.

As for their lights causing problems, this will be because you didn't have enough lighting power and had to use high ISO settings - if you had shot with studio flash it wouldn't have mattered.
 
Oh well :D

You might have a point Garry ;) Out of interest, what sort of exposure levels to those video lights generate? I've never had to do battle with them, but I'm guessing that if you could get at least three or four stops above them, they'd get washed out?
 
I've never had to do battle with them either, because I've never allowed them to get in my way.
The ones I've seen are probably only about the equivalent of 300 watts tungsten and yes, they would have been overwhelmed if the OP had had enough flash power. But he didn't, so he should have insisted.
 
The videographers were very 'insistent'. i.e. they were not gonna switch their lights off come hell or high water. As I mentioned earlier this was a favour for a friend and although he said he will 'sort me out' he had paid a small fortune for the videographer, so I was kind of caught in the middle a bit. Another point to mention was that I had an hour in the afternoon to take them around and get some more intimate portrait style shots of the couple but the vidoegraphers grabbed them and took them away for my hour and then I had ten minutes to get what I needed. You could tell the couple were just a bit worn out from the whole media experience.

I'm no shrinking voilet and despite several strong protests they were doing what they were doing and that was that. Hard to make too much of a protest without upsetting the happy couple on their special day. Harry Hill type fights are perhaps not the order of the day!

I've learnt a lot from this and not just about cultural differences either!

Anyway, a lighting topic, so back to lighting matters. You are indeed correct Garry, with true studio lighting I could have just set up my pair of lights right next to theirs and just let it overcome the constant lighting. I'm not sure how common this kind of experience is regarding lighting, but will need to consider perhaps additional kit for the future.

EDIT: Using their lights as a main and on camera 580EXII as a 'fill', I ended up with ISO400 F5.6 1/125. The stage was huge mind, being nearly 30' across, with a three seater settee with an armchair at each end.
 
Marcus - any example shots for us to see please?

It's yuck when you are not in control of the lighting. I shot an amateur fashion show once. There were several pink spot lights casting a horrible tint of red. I had no control over this :(
 
FlyTVR said:
Marcus - any example shots for us to see please?

It's yuck when you are not in control of the lighting. I shot an amateur fashion show once. There were several pink spot lights casting a horrible tint of red. I had no control over this :(
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At the moment I'm in quite a dark mood over this as I'm not sure the group shots are up to scratch. I've managed to control the white balance and adjust the levels in PP, but they are just not as sharp as I'd want and I'm not sure why. It's too consistent over the images to be camera shake and it isnt poor focussing. I can only guess it was the quality of the light?

I think the client will be looking to creat a montage of the 20 or so group shots on an album page so I guess it will be ok, but if anyone decides they want to order anything larger than an 8 x 10, it aint gonna look pretty.

I'll sleep on it and consider putting one up in the morning. :)
 
Noise shouldn't be a problem at 400 ISO, camera shake shouldn't be a problem at 1/125th (although on another topic you could have reduced the effect of the video lighting by half simply by shooting at 1/250th) so the most likely cause of the unsharpness is either focussing errors (unlikely) or limited depth of field at f/5.6 (more likely)

Studio lights would have given you f/11 minimum.

It's probably very unlikely that anyone will want shots larger than 10 x 8, but if they do you can just tell them that they can't have them as the shape of the print doesn't suit the shape of the group... Or make a 12 x 10 4x the price of a 10 x 8:)

Anyway, look on it as good experience and a learning curve. Next time you'll hire or buy studio lighting, and next time you won't let videographers call the shots.
 
Thanks Garry your advice is much appreciated.


Garry Edwards said:
Anyway, look on it as good experience and a learning curve. Next time you'll hire or buy studio lighting, and next time you won't let videographers call the shots.
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Agreed. The part in bold is the bit I would do differently if I was to do this again.
 
hi marcus, this thread has been an interesting read. Was the wedding an indian/asian wedding by any chance? Sounds like just the type of events I cover regularly :lol:

With regards to the videographers, I would have asked them to turn their lights off in between group shots, so they make their dumb film of scanning peoples faces and everyone looking like a stiff in the morgue, they flick their lights off, you flick yours on and take shot, next group comes on you repeat. I would have also politely had a word with the family or B&G too, just telling them that the videographer's lights are getting in your way and they are being unreasonable. I dont expect anything to happen from here but atleast you informed them on the day and your not culpable when the photos come out different.
 
Thanks hsuffyan for responding. You are spot on regarding the videographers and what they were doing but they didnt want to switch lights on and off. They really really didnt want to!

I've learnt a lot from that day and after everyone seeing the photo's after some PP people are happy so although they didnt hit the mark regarding my level of quallity, it seems to have met the brief. I have to say although this was a favour and I've been promised some other work along the same lines, I thnk the culture difference was perhaps too much, where I think an asian togger may be the better person for the job. I'll sure recomend you if/when the queries come in.
 
Marcus Geezer said:
Thanks hsuffyan for responding. You are spot on regarding the videographers and what they were doing but they didnt want to switch lights on and off. They really really didnt want to!

I've learnt a lot from that day and after everyone seeing the photo's after some PP people are happy so although they didnt hit the mark regarding my level of quallity, it seems to have met the brief. I have to say although this was a favour and I've been promised some other work along the same lines, I thnk the culture difference was perhaps too much, where I think an asian togger may be the better person for the job. I'll sure recomend you if/when the queries come in.
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Glad to hear you met the client's expectations, shows good grit and determination on your part. So well done :)

Feel free to drop me a PM on some tips for indian weddings, just in case you were considering not targeting this market much, its definitely something everyone on here is more than capable of doing.
 
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