Lighting for a one time group shot

Hi Everyone,

I have been asked to shoot a 30 member chorale singing group. The setting will be in a dimly lit chapel before their next concert. I have been a photographer for may years but haven't done studio work so I don't have strobes or other studio lighting. I will be shooting with a Canon 40D. I have a 580 EX II flash which I know is totally inadequate in this situation but will provide some fill lighting. I do have two sets of 1200 Watt halogens with stands. Would it work to bounce these lights off of umbrellas, set the camera's color balance for halogen, shoot RAW images, and then tweak color with Photoshop? Is this even close to enough light?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Valzan

With 30 people, you need huge light sources to cover them evenly. The best way to do that would be to use the halogens for sure. If the ceiling is low enough and white, I'd try to bounce them off of it. If the walls are white and close, then you could possibly use those. But I realize that isn't the case with most chapels. So I think you'll have to be a bit creative.

I don't think an umbrella is going to be big enough unless you use HUGE ones. That would probably work alright. If you want really soft light, I've never done this, but you may try rigging up two white bed sheets and place the lights behind those (with some distance b/t the lights and sheets, of course). That would give you great diffusion and would obviously cut down the power a lot, but I think it would still be enough to help the situation and give you some nice head to toe light.

But that's the only suggestion I've got. Absolutely shoot in RAW and take several shots. Good luck!

Hey Everybody,

I just wanted to post the follow up to this initial request. I thought you might like to know what happened. I had arranged to rent a full 3 head studio set of lights from Calumet. When I arrived it was pretty clear that there wouldn't be time to set up and tear down the gear as the chorale singers began trickling in a half hour before the concert and the sound recording guy also had to set up his gear directly in front of the stage area. It was also obvious that popping strobes during the performance wouldn't be acceptable either. I decided to make the best of the available light for ambiance and to crank the 40Ds ISO to it's max setting of 1600 knowing that if I shot RAW images I could deal with them later in Photoshop and use Noise Ninja for the graininess. I've done a lot of concert photography so I pretty much knew what to expect. So here are the results which have been extremely well received by the client as "incredibly artistic".

http://picasaweb.google.com/lloydsla...902#slideshowH

Next time, I will set up a couple of small studio modeling lights bounced off of gold umbrellas directly in front of the stage, low and out of sight, and rent a faster L-series lens. The only time I really missed the strobes was for the group shots from the balcony and would probably get them for that.

Thanks for all of your suggestions. As always it was a learning experience :-)

I took a look at your images in the link and thought that you got several great shots, especially with the stage lights almost selectively illuminating some of the choral members. I can see where some front lighting would have been useful, since many of their faces were more in shadow, but you knew that already ;)

Thanks for the description of your set up and for sharing your learning experience. I'm just beginning to learn lighting, and found this very informative.

Nice job! :thumbsup: