Runway script needed

[Franglais]

A friend is organising a fashion show, a thing with the girls parading along the runway wearing the goods. She wants me to do the pictures. I haven't done one of these for ages. Anybody got any experience? Here's the brief:

- low budget (one reason why she asked me)
- Brazilian swimsuits & underwear (ditto)
- in a loft somewhere in Paris at 7:30pm (dusk)
- duration = 30 minutes
- there will be a video crew as well
- she wants me to shoot flash to be sure of getting some good stills

Here's what I figure is my script

1. Position = some way beyond the far end of the runway, good view of the girl the whole time she's on the runway
2. Height = at least at eye level with the girls so I'm not bothered by the spectators, perhaps slightly to the side so I can isolate just one girl if there happen to be two out at the same time
3. Gear = D300 + 28-70 f2.8 and 80-200 f2.8 so I cover the zoom range I might need, I have fast autofocus and wide aperture if I need it
4. SB800 direct flash set to overpower the room lights by 1 stop
5. Orange filter for the flash in case the room lights are really strong or the video crew have brought their own lights
6. Continuous focus. Shutter speed 1/250s if possible
7. ISO depends on the room lights. 800 ISO minimum, 3200 ISO maximum
8. For each outfit do one full-length, one from thights upwards, one waist upwards and one view from behind
9. Take a spare, fully-charged SB800
10. Get there an hour before so I can size up the situation and think about it

If possible I would do it without flash but somehow I don't think there will be enough light and she specifically asked me for flash

Any suggestions?

[SmartWombat]

Using room light (or video light) for fill ?
Matching the colour might mean a few orange filters to get it right.
If there are fluorescents, then colour balance will be difficult, and you perhaps need the video crew lights to help.

Flash off camera, remote triggered?
Use both flashes if possible.
Soft boxes on the flashes?
Or do you wan the sharp shadow look ?

[Franglais]

SW>> Using room light (or video light) for fill ?
Matching the colour might mean a few orange filters to get it right.

FR>> Got that

SW>> If there are fluorescents, then colour balance will be difficult, and you perhaps need the video crew lights to help.

FR>> If the video crew have lights, that is. This is a budget event. I shan't try filter the flash if ambient is flourescent, I will just leave it as a greening background and use the flash as main light.

SW>> Flash off camera, remote triggered?
Use both flashes if possible.
Soft boxes on the flashes?

FR>> Possible. It depends on how much time I have to set up, if I can find somewhere to put the flashes, how big the room is, etc.

SW>> Or do you wan the sharp shadow look ?

FR>> Simplest and safest plus it's what the client asked for. The subject is sexy so dramatic lighting is quite a good solution

Thanks for your help

[Franglais]

OK here's what happened, in case it's of any use to anybody.

I got there only 20 minutes before the start (damned Paris traffic) so I didn't have time to experiment.

I chose a spot where I could see the girls walk towards me for 3 meters along a fairly dark part of the room, stop in an open space lit by the video lights and go up some stairs. My plan was:

- girl appears at the start of the 3 meters - zoom in
- shoot - follow focus & zoom out - shoot - follow focus and zoom out
- girl stops and poses under the video lights. Zoom out and shoot when she's still. This is the real picture. Do several if the girl stays put long enough
- Girl turns and goes up the steps. Option to shoot

The 28-70 was the perfect range of focal lengths (equivalent 42-105mm) to get the girls from head to foot the whole time. I decided to set center point continuous focussing and fixed aperture f4.5 to give me enough depth-of-field to cover all the garments. I finally set 2000 ISO knowing that the camera was not going to drop below 1/60s shutter speed due to the presence of the flash.

My idea:

1. In the dark part the main light would be the flash and would freeze the movement of the walking girl but give me a background that was underexposed by 1 stop.
2. In the open space the video light would match the flash and give me 1/60s or faster. The risk was that with such a slow shutter speed if the subject moved there would be sharp detail from the flash and blurred detail from the video light. This worried me a lot but if I increased the power of the flash it looked horrible.

What happened:

a. The professional models were excellent, wonderful, adorable, understanding, did just what I wanted.
b. The non-professionals varied a lot. Some didn't stop at all which dismayed the video crew, but I always had my first two shots in the dark.
c. The public kept on standing in front of the video lights
d. I had a guy in a distracting set of white pants in the background of some of my shots. I saw him too late to do anything about it
e. On the RAW file I had to adjust the exposure (+1/2 stop) and increase the contrast to give more vibrancy and make the model stand out from the background

Finally I had 132 correct images with exactly what I was supposed to show. In total I did 473 images so you can imagine the number that were blurred, of no interest, someone else's flash went off at the same time, etc. However I has almost none that were out-of-focus or wrongly exposed

I was amazed at the amount of energy left in the flash batteries - it took 10 hours to discharge them afterwards. Next time I will get there much earlier and try to set up a master - slave system, try bounce. I was using TTL BBL mode but I think straight TTL might be better seeing as how I had to adjust exposure and contrast afterwards.