Large group lighting in smallish conference room

The23rdman

The23rdman

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Dean
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I'm shooting a wedding at the Britannia Hotel in Bramhope, Leeds in two weeks. i checked out the venue yesterday and found a potential challenge. If the weather is good there are some nice places to shoot, but if it rains the group shots will have to be inside. The conference room is ugly as hell with one side full of big windows, 8 foot ceilings and tungsten downlighters.

I may have to shoot 60 people in one of these and light them. The background option is the window for backlight as far as I can see. The walls are 'orrible. I'm going to get up on a ladder and shoot down at them, but can't really get brollys high enough so was thinking of using the white ceiling to bounce two a light at each end? It wont be perfect, but if I'm above shooting down i think it'll work.

Any thoughts?
 
Best of luck with that...

Yes, bouncing lights directly off the ceiling should be fine. The trick is to get them at the right height and angle to make sure that the light bounces in the right direction.
 
My recommendation would be to place your camera on tripod (if possible), expose for the ambient light coming in through the windows and set up two flashes to fire above and behind you on either side of the camera to bounce light back onto your group. Don't be afraid to use something like 1/50 f6 1000 ISO and whatever amount of flash gives you enough bounced fill light on the Group.

Hope this helps, others may provide better guidance :)
 
Should be OK. Minimise the colour mix, so either turn off the tungsten light, or shut the curtain, and use the tungsten, and gel the flash to match (if that's an option). Depending on the sort of weather, you could swing it either way, I suppose. Just beware of the casting shadows when bouncing the flash. Right height, reasonably high so as not to lose power, and angle it so the light will be pointing down towards the group rather than across.

Good luck.
 
I'm going to turn the downlighters off or a few people will be in spotlights. The light through the huge windows will be much more even.

I'm also considering the approach I've seen David Hobby recommend, which is to use two bare bulbs or stofens pointing upwards set pretty high. It gives a kind of hard and soft light that gets everywhere. It'll be no bother to have my assistant stick a couple on and try it.
 
Ok, if you are familiar with Mr Hobby, then I'm preaching to choir here, aren't I :) Then get creative, mate. The 2 flash - bounce/Stofen/bare bulb, any combo will work OK, as you are triangulating the light. Just position is for effect, and go nuts, lol. I love playing while on the job (after a safe shot is in the can, of course).
 
Firstly Dean - fingers crossed on the weather!

Secondly, can you get to the venue and try some stuff out before the day?

Thirdly, for me I'd keep things as simple as possible and go for some flat lighting. I'd avoid multiple lights - you don't want crossed shadows.

Now you say you can't get any modifiers high enough, but you are going to shoot down off a ladder.....maybe I've misread that? I was going to suggest a large light source (e.g octabox) and a single studio head as near to camera as possible.

Anyway, good luck and it would be really good if you updated the thread with your results.

Cheers.

Dav
 
FlyTVR said:
Firstly Dean - fingers crossed on the weather!

Secondly, can you get to the venue and try some stuff out before the day? Possibly, but without 60 people to try it out on...;)

Thirdly, for me I'd keep things as simple as possible and go for some flat lighting. I'd avoid multiple lights - you don't want crossed shadows. That's just never ever going to work efficiently for that number of people, mate. I don't care much about cross shadows - I just care that the shots are crisp and everyone is equally lit.

Now you say you can't get any modifiers high enough, but you are going to shoot down off a ladder.....maybe I've misread that? Nope you didn't misread it. There's no other practical way to get everyone in shot. I was going to suggest a large light source (e.g octabox) and a single studio head as near to camera as possible. A large octa will be too low to light everyone. I'm going to attempt to use the ceiling as my light source.

Anyway, good luck and it would be really good if you updated the thread with your results. That depends if I need them and how ***** they are! ;)

Cheers.

Dav
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