Lighting a group of 11

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buckeyeguy1
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p.1 #1 · Lighting a group of 11

I was just asked last night to take a portrait of my wife's extended family when visit for the holidays. In all there will be 11 of us in the shot (one being my 1 year old setting on a lap). I have the group pose already thought out, 7 people standing and 3 setting in front one of the ones in front will be holding my 1 year old. I figured with two rows and one setting, I shouldn't have to worry about shadows on faces. I am not planning on having a special background. We will be taking the pictures in a very large church event room which has roughly 20' ceilings and has one outside wall that has a lot of windows in it that face east.

My dilemma is I'm not sure if I have enough light/modifiers for that large of a group. As it stands now, I have one AB800 and two flashes (one SB-900 and one Yongnuo 565ex). As far as modifiers I have one PCB large soft box which is 32x40, one 43" white shoot through umbrella without a black cover and one 43" soft silver umbrella.

I had thought about two different lighting setups. The first would be putting the AB800 behind the camera at about 8' and getting a 60" shoot through umbrella and hope I have enough even spread. I'm thinking I might run into an issue with having enough power since I will have to back it away from the group more.

The other setup I was thinking about was putting the AB800 on one side of the group with a 60" umbrella and then putting the flashes with smaller umbrellas on the other side. I'm not sure how that would look using two umbrellas on one side.

I'm thinking that I might need to add another monolight and another modifier (or two) to complete this task. Any thoughts?

I am aware that I can bump up ISO a bit to help with lack of light, but I would like to keep it at 200-400 ISO if possible on my D700.

Dec 12, 2012 at 09:44 PM

myam203
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p.1 #2 · Lighting a group of 11

You're over-thinking this! You have more than enough power to do any setup you want. I bet you could use just the window light if you wanted, or even as your fill, but if you want to use your lights, grab your 24-70 and shoot at f/5.6 and ISO 400. You don't even have to haul out the B800, just use the 43" umbrellas with your speedlights at half power or so, and keep them fairly close to the camera for even coverage and to avoid shadows.

Dec 12, 2012 at 10:05 PM

buckeyeguy1
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p.1 #3 · Lighting a group of 11

I was kinda thinkin the same thing. I might just buy me a second shoot through and call it a a day. I might just take my B800 and a background to fool around a little bit since I know I'll have some people to practice on. Thanks for the reply.

Dec 13, 2012 at 12:36 AM

BrianO
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p.1 #4 · Lighting a group of 11

buckeyeguy1 wrote: ...I had thought about two different lighting setups. The first would be putting the AB800 behind the camera at about 8' and getting a 60" shoot through umbrella and hope I have enough even spread.

That should work fine. By having the light centered over the camera you'll have pretty even lighting on all your subjects, and not have any crossed shadows like you might get with multiple lights.

Shoot from far enough back that fall-off between the front and back rows isn't a concern, and get up on a step stool or something so that the people have to look up a bit. That'll keep everyone's faces visible.

Have fun!

Dec 13, 2012 at 05:22 AM

a.RodriguezPix
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p.1 #5 · Lighting a group of 11

great tips!

Dec 13, 2012 at 05:25 AM

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