Advice on Lighting

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Simondclarke said

Settings were F11 1/100 and ISO 200.

Looking at image and your settings, you've done well. You're using wide(ish) lens so perhaps you can get away with f8 as d.o.f would probably be OK and up the iso a tad too, reposition lights just a little would give you a bit more latitude/cover. Always tricky when on the spot and little time to play with set up. The light is only slightly compromised on 3 or 4 of the subjects some of which could be convincingly recovered in post. Not much to be concerned about IMHO.

Simondclarke said

This is a photo that I did last week, using just the Godox V1, and Godox TT350.  The photo looks ok, but the lighting is uneven with shadows on some of the faces.  I have a similar shoot next week with a different club.  I was hoping with the additional of Godox AD100 will help with the lighting and improve the image

Edited by Simondclarke

Actually, going back to this (which is very good considering the circumstances) you could “fix” a lot of the lighting later in Lightroom.

Gradient mask to lighten the edges a bit where the light fell off; bit of messing with a soft brush to lighten individual faces.

For one or two shots, ten minutes editing each is less effort than carrying loads of gear.

For a wedding or something where you have to deliver hundreds of shots, it’s less effort to carry the extra gear and cut the editing.

Always look for the lazy answer. ;)

It's actually pretty straightforward. Here is a diagram from when I used to do this stuff on 35mm film back in the 1990's. To mitigate my appalling handwriting, I just cleaned-up and edited my battered old diagram in GIMP. Click image to enlarge; right-click and select "save image as" to save it. It's a png, 10 pixels/mm and prints nicely on A4 paper.

Basically you need two reasonably powerful studio flash heads firing backwards into high-mounted white brollies - just bog-standard kit, nothing fancy. Normal studio light stands will do the trick. At the time, I was using a pair of Courtenay 600 Joule heads, on half power, mounted on a pair of bog standard Interfit stands. Use the camera on manual ("M"). Don't worry about ambient lighting, the flash will be at least a whole order of magnitude brighter than any ambient light. Besides, you'll need it for the autofocus to do it's thing.

Triggering the flash

Back in the day, we used a flash sync cable to trigger the flash. Today I'd use cheapie wireless flash trigger set, with one flash unit set to "slave" mode - no dangly leads for folks to trip over. :-)

Settings

I show two lots of suggested camera and lighting settings at the top of the page. One for cameras with standard "135" 35mm (36mm x24mm) sized sensors, and another for much smaller "µ4/3" micro-four-thirds (17.3mm x 13mm) that I use today. The settings without an asterisk are pretty much set in stone. The settings marked with an asterisk are sane starting points, assuming your subjects are about 5-6 metres away, that you may need to vary a bit to suit your exact circumstances. Good luck. :-)

Edited by waist.it

I'd add a strobe or two in the background to give a bit of rim/wrap around. That way the models don't get lost in the shadows. Also as others have said, boost your ISO if you need to. You could fire a back strobe in slave mode so you won't need an extra radio trigger.

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Simondclarke said

Hi

Do i have enough lighting to capture the team professionally? 

Totally depends on how bright the ambient is.

Stanmore said

Pretty much impossible to advise specifically without seeing the hall and team, but you'll likely get away with it by smashing up your ISO.

For similar group portraits in large rooms I would typically use 2 or 3 400/500W strobes, fitted with 1 large soft box for a subtle key, and large white brolly's bouncing off of white(ish) ceiling and/or walls for fill and ambient.

That's pretty much the amount of power I'd expect to use to do the same thing. If bouncing isn't possible then I'd do it by firing through a 3m x 3m silk.

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The Ghost the natural light travels 93 million miles yet the problem is usually the last two metres... ;)

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You will need to have your lights a fair distance away from the group to not have issues with light fall off.  Watch for shadows cast from one group member to another. 

Do not use high speed sync, it will rob you of flash power and you are already power limited with these smaller lights. 

Start at ISO 400 and see if you can get to your target F8-F11, if not up it to 800, if the hall lights are too bright then see if some of them can be turned off to give you further control. 

Use the V1 and Ad100 pro as your main lights, power wise the 100Pro is about 1/3rd stop more than the V1, just an FYI.  The smallest light can be used to add some light to the background.

Simondclarke said

Thanks, everyday is a learning day.  Do you think that my lights Godox AD100 & 1V will be strong enough to travel 10m?

https://strobist.blogspot.com/2018/01/slc-2l-02-two-speedlight-daylight-group.html

There is virtually no chance your interior lighting is anywhere close to that exposure.

Edited by The Ghost

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