Large group in a dark room

[tiddlybiz]

Hello, I've got to take a photo of about 100 people in a dark dining hall before their meal starts and I was looking for some advice. I've done the same thing before last year and I was pretty happy with the results but I think there is room for improvement. Last time I used a nikon sb900 flash on the hot-shoe with the plastic diffuser thing you can stick on it and angled it towards the middle of the ceiling (which is also dark). The diffused light bounced off the walls enough to give pretty good fill lighting with ISO 1250 f6.3, 1/30th second. I was taking the photo from a balcony overlooking the room and stood in the corner of it. The main problem was lighting the whole room evenly - the back was slightly darker.

The next time I do this I have been considering using some off camera flashes with an umbrella. Is this a wise move? Situate them on either corner of the balcony and direct them to the opposite corner looking downwards. I'd probably use two although I do have a few more at my disposal if needs be. Perhaps use one to light up the upper part of the room a bit.

 

[EdMoss]

Can you post the previous pic you took, it would make it a lot easier to see what you have to work with?

 

[tiddlybiz]

Can you post the previous pic you took, it would make it a lot easier to see what you have to work with?

Here's the previous photo I took. Its still a bit dark as you can see.

 

[EdMoss]

Not a bad job under the circumstances.

Not a lot you can do about the rear of the group, a bit of PP would help.
Only suggestion I can make is put another flash to your left (along the balcony) to help.

Is bouncing an option?

I would light something like this with 2xqflash set to full power and bounced at the ceiling (assuming it's cream/white..) Lighting the rear of the group, because of your position would be very difficult without loads of cloning (you could put a flash to the left of the pic, at their level and clone it out later.)

 

[tiddlybiz]

Unfortunately the ceiling is beams of dark wood like the wall at the back so bouncing in rather ineffective. That's why I was thinking of using a few flashes shot through umbrellas pointing directly at different parts of the group. Not sure if its going to end up much better than my last attempt though.

 

[GHP]

I've seen a lot worse !
Could you not (in PP) put a "reverse grad" filter effect, which darkens the front, and gets lighter towards the back?
I think a problem with adding more flashes in brollies (or whatever modifier) would start to give you hotspots which would be more difficult to even out in PP.

 

[tiddlybiz]

I've seen a lot worse !
Could you not (in PP) put a "reverse grad" filter effect, which darkens the front, and gets lighter towards the back?
I think a problem with adding more flashes in brollies (or whatever modifier) would start to give you hotspots which would be more difficult to even out in PP.

I could do that, or even try a physical grad filter - i've got a lee 0.6 and 0.9 soft grad.

Do you think it is worth sticking a flash on the opposite side of the balcony? Or should I just basically do the same as last time.

 

[EdMoss]

Shoot it as a RAW file and blend 2 outputs together, the correctly exposed foreground and the underexposed background, outputted at/near correct exposure.
Light it as before, I've seen a lot worse..don't go messing with filters, really not worth it.

 

[tiddlybiz]

Thanks for all the advice! I've done the photo now and here are the results if you are interested! I ended up using a flash and umbrella either side of the balcony and combined two different exposures together in pp. Unfortunately my tripod is terrible so aligning the images was a bit difficult but I think it is an improvement over the previous shot. Unfortunately my positioning of people is a bit off this time and they're all bunched up at the back a bit. Also the guy at the front wasn't looking on any of the photos and a couple of others seemed intent on acting wierd!!

 

[tiddlybiz]

Any ideas other than what I've mentioned how the second photo could be improved? I'm not taking another one imminently but for future reference there is always room for improvement! I've noticed there are shadows on the back wall this time due to a spotlight they put on. I'm not too keen on that and perhaps would switch similar lights off in future. The flash has also created some shadows on people cast from the people in front of them. Not sure how to improve that other than just spacing people out more and perhaps turn the flash down a little bit. I didn't have much time to set up so just put them on full and it seemed ok!