I am shooting my 3rd wedding in the middle of March. The reception will be at night in a dark, wood paneled lodge. I've attached a small picture of the place.

I have fast lenses: 35L, 50 1.4, 85 1.8 and two flashes; a 580ex II and 430ex II, and a speed light transmitter.

Other than walking around with the flash on the camera, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Well you have only one option.... and it happens to be my patented HoffBox...

Hi Tony,

First let me say I love your work, so any insight you can give me is much appreciated.

I've pulled a photo from one of your weddings... how did you achieve this?

Im in for some info on this!

mineymole wrote:
Hi Tony,

First let me say I love your work, so any insight you can give me is much appreciated.

I've pulled a photo from one of your weddings... how did you achieve this?



I'm going to take a gamble and say it's cross lit with a strobe in each corner, possibly with a softbox or something on the strobe to the rear right of the photographer?

That's generally the method I use, possibly with a bit of on camera fill. As a quick note, I find it's best to get the lights up as high as possible as well, it causes less distracting flash for the guests and causes shadows for you.

Alex

That was my thought ai3x. I'm thinking that if I put at least two strobes (I would have to buy another) across from each other in the corners... then my strobe on camera with either my demb flip or fong lumisphere...

The speedlite transmitter (be it an ST-E2 or a flash) will give you two major problems:

1. It only allows for E-TTL operation on the flashes. This means that if you include a flash in your shot, you get a (heavily sometimes) underexposed image, because of the very strong flash light. You can compensate the flash exposure, etc, but in the end, it is a PITA so you have to be careful not to "see" a flash through the viewfinder. The fun is bigger if the reception hall contains mirrors or windows, and the flash light gets reflected off those...

2. The range of the transmitter is poor. It works for close distances but it becomes completely unreliable when the distance grows. Another problem is that you need direct visibility between the flash heads and the transmitter. While this is not completely true, as the signal can reflect from walls, windows, etc, most of the time you have to position yourself so that the beam from the transmitter "sees" the flash, but this on the other hand contradicts the situation 1 where you need to avoid having the flashes in your frame.

These two issues make any kind of Infrared transmitter a good toy to try a few creative lighting setups at most. Far from being a reliable tool for lighting a reception hall. All I say here is from my personal (unpleasant) experience with the ST-E2 and flashes. Well, I bought the ST-E2 more for having an AF assist light than for triggering wireless flashes, but for the times I tried to use this with 580 Ex flashes, it only worked for a few things.

If you want something serious, buy radio triggers. There are plenty of these on the market. I am using Pocket Wizards, but there are also cheaper one out there. With 2-3 flashguns and radio triggers you can do some nice things.

ai3x wrote:
mineymole wrote:
Hi Tony,

First let me say I love your work, so any insight you can give me is much appreciated.

I've pulled a photo from one of your weddings... how did you achieve this?



I'm going to take a gamble and say it's cross lit with a strobe in each corner, possibly with a softbox or something on the strobe to the rear right of the photographer?

That's generally the method I use, possibly with a bit of on camera fill. As a quick note, I find it's best to get the lights up as high as possible as well, it causes less distracting flash for the guests and causes shadows for you.

Alex

It's nowhere near that complicated...

I will say this Mineymole... lighting that room is just a matter of figuring out where you want the ambient to be, figuring out how much fill you want and which direction you want it to come from. If you want to add stuff off-camera, you can, but I personally never have more than 1 bare strobe off camera. I don't want the guests to notice me.

You can use off camera flash in different combinations too. We will use a big studio flash set up to bounce light (if possible) and then use an off camera 580 for fill. We also will use one 580 off camera and use the room light for fill. Here are a few examples.

Wow Zach... very helpful... all of you. I only hope that someday I am able to offer advice. Thank you, thank you, thank you and thank you again!

Three words: Bounce, bounce and bounce.

Chris Miller
www.imagineimagery.com

On camera with a bounce card
second flash on a stand pointed at the crowd (can be bounced, but i find i like it better shot straight on. depends on venue too. I work a couple with a 30 foot ceiling - bouncing is about useless - too much distance)
I use PWs to trigger the second flash, it's usually set at 1/8 give or take a bit.

I'm still using 40Ds and try to keep iso at 800, but will to go 1600, manual mode at 1/50th give or take a bit at 2.8.

Do you guys shoot in manual when you have your flashes set up like this? I ask because there will likely be a pretty big difference between light closer to the flash and further away. I helped set lights (alien bees) up for a big party in Marco, and i know they had the light meters out and were measuring the strength. But I would worry about blowing out some shots close to the lights.

Deb Brundage wrote:
Do you guys shoot in manual when you have your flashes set up like this? I ask because there will likely be a pretty big difference between light closer to the flash and further away. I helped set lights (alien bees) up for a big party in Marco, and i know they had the light meters out and were measuring the strength. But I would worry about blowing out some shots close to the lights.

Do you mean manual on the camera or manual on the light? We use studio strobes (always manual) and our cameras never leave "M" mode on weddings. We've done it enough now where we have a feel on how to adjust for subject-to-light distances by rolling the aperture one way or another (and in some cases the ISO instead if we want a particular depth of field). If you remember your Strobist 101, only the aperture and ISO affect how much the light from the flash affects the photo's exposure. The shutter does not.

Yeah -- I meant on the camera. Do you keep a flash on camera as well? The couple I shot with would keep one setting on the camera and used the on-camera flash set on ETTL. I imagine it would take a lot of practice with the two lights.

Also - do you keep both lights on one side of the dance floor, or do you have them diagonally?

Grays -- does someone hold the off-camera 580 for fill or do you have it on a stand?

Deb,
It's really not that complicated. For this shot, I used two speed lights off camera, about 90 degrees apart and set the power to a pretty low setting so as not to blow out the ambient light. Both lights were unmodified and placed about 40-50 feet from the dance floor.



For this shot, I used the same two off camera lights and a bounced on-camera light.



I tend to use too much light on my reception shots and I'm leaning towards keeping it simple, but if it works, it works.

Deb Brundage wrote:
Yeah -- I meant on the camera. Do you keep a flash on camera as well? The couple I shot with would keep one setting on the camera and used the on-camera flash set on ETTL. I imagine it would take a lot of practice with the two lights.

Also - do you keep both lights on one side of the dance floor, or do you have them diagonally?


We do not keep a flash on the camera. We've thought about it, but the bigger strobes are sufficient for our needs and get the look we want so we don't want the extra bulk if we can avoid it. We just have one of the tiny little CyberSync transmitters on the hotshoe. To use both you'd need to use the sync jack and some messy cords and brackets.

Every venue is different, so I'll just cover our last one. The room had a balcony where we set up three strobes: one bouncing off the ceiling and two shooting down on to the dance floor from either side. On the actual level of the floor we had one more light that we moved around as needed. Some don't like to use this much flash, but it works for us and gets the look that we show in our portfolio. This room was about 1/30, f/1.4 at ISO 3200 for ambient.

Bouquet toss from it:

When do you set the lights up? Hmmm... I'm still deciding what look I like for receptions. I think I need a gopher to hold my off-camera flash all night ;-)

I set them up this last time while Amy was off with the girls and the makeup/hair stuff. We include ambient when there is ambient, especially for outdoor weddings, but this location was DARK. Anything less than the AF on Canon's 1D3 would not have focused well at all. Our 5Ds are useless in that low of light.

At some point I'd like to look into PCB's CyberCommander set of triggers so we can select which lights we want to hit.

Ryan Britton wrote:
Anything less than the AF on Canon's 1D3 would not have focused well at all. Our 5Ds are useless in that low of light.


I've considered keeping a 580EXII on my camera JUST for the focus assist -- and keeping it to "flash doesn't fire" -- you could still plug a PW in to the camera to get the other lights to flash, right?

You just nailed the reason I want a 1D. That 5D, esp. with the 70-200, can't find a focus point in low light. Even with the center point.