Hey folks,
I have been asked by a friend to take a large family photo on Xmas eve. Expect up to 35 folks in the picture. Equipment: Canon 30D ,580exII, 550Ex, and a 420EX.
As I had decide I wanted a winter project, looking at some studio / portrait fun shots I just picked up 2 light stands and 2 umbrellas (43").
So I am looking for a little help with lighting this project. I do not want to tie up a lot of there time or mine with settiing this up. Any ideas whould be greatly appricated.

Thanks
Wayne

You have a great question for me, as I have not shot groups like this either. However, I have found that you need to understand a couple of things before you get to far.

This past weekend, I shot a large group in a well lit room. At first, I thought about shooting in manual mode like I would in a studio; however, I found that this did not take benefit of the ambient light that I had. Said another way, my manual setup was incorrect for the environment, and as you mentioned, I did not want to spend alot of time setting up and shooting test shots.

So, I switched to TV mode, and that worked great. I was able to take full benefit of the ambient light and used my external flashes as fill lights. I have no clue if this was the correct setup, but it seemed to provide a suitable result.

What environment are you shooting? Do you have alot of ambient light? Thoughts?

See this tutorial: Photographing Groups (PDF)

Chuck

Bo Schmidt wrote:
You have a great question for me, as I have not shot groups like this either. However, I have found that you need to understand a couple of things before you get to far.

This past weekend, I shot a large group in a well lit room. At first, I thought about shooting in manual mode like I would in a studio; however, I found that this did not take benefit of the ambient light that I had. Said another way, my manual setup was incorrect for the environment, and as you mentioned, I did not want to spend alot of time setting up and shooting test shots.

So, I switched to TV mode, and that worked great. I was able to take full benefit of the ambient light and used my external flashes as fill lights. I have no clue if this was the correct setup, but it seemed to provide a suitable result.

What environment are you shooting? Do you have alot of ambient light? Thoughts?

While this may be the safest, relatively fail-safe way of getting that done, if you want to take your photography up a notch, you really need to learn how to shoot in M by controlling your light with the aperture/ISO settings and the ambient with your shutter speed. If you have IS or wide lenses, you can go all the way from 1/25 to 1/250 to control how much ambient you let in, which means that you'll frequently be able to just leave your flashes on, say, 1/4 or 1/8 power and just do the rest in the camera from there by keeping track of the optimal exposure and just balancing it it out so your histogram stays the same as you adjust your ISO/aperture and shutter speed.

You mention a shutter box, lights/modifiers but no mention of anything with an aperture built into it. In other words, you might want to reveal which lens/es you have available.

TG