I am still new to SLR, and I was asked to take a picture of a local church choir in an outdoor setting. Most of the group already know me on a personal level, in addition, my services are $FREE.99 I'm willing to do it, and feel confident enough to take on the challenge. Does anyone have any recommendations of what equipment I should use/rent for a group of this size--and the best way to compose such a shot? Your feedback would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

I'd post this in the Lighting forum. And do some searches in Lighting. There are def posts there which would be helpful.

I once witnessed a pro applying a very creative approach to such a problem.

His task was to photograph the entire cast and crew of a high school musical production, and do it on stage in a poorly lit auditorium. About 80 kids. He divided up the stage and set into several non-overlapping segments, marking them with some masking tape on the floor. He set his camera on a good tripod for a full view. Don't know what lens he used, but I'd guess around 35m because the end result had no obvious distortion. He used one high powered strobe with a large white umbrella.

He assembled the kids in groups of 10 to 15 and shot one group at a time, each one in a different marked segment of the stage, moving the strobe/umbrella each time to highlight the group. Actually, he had an assistant to move the strobe, and fired off 3 or 4 shots of each group. Then, he obviously composited the separate shots together for a final image with all groups. Turned out great.

His strobe and umbrella was clearly unable to cover the entire stage in one shot. But by moving it for multiple shots he got the job done. And only the group being shot had to "pose", the others could goof off in place until their turn. The set-up took him about 20 minutes, but the actual shooting was done in about 3 minutes.

OK, well here is the short version of a better answer than I gave before. Two strobes at least high from the front more or less equidistant from each other, with you in the middle. You are just going to even light with this many, nothing fancy, not short lighting or worrying about shadows...none of that. Just get light on all them in roughly the same amount. Then you are in the middle with something like a 24-70 so you can zoom for a good frame. Remember to leave enough on the top and bottom so you can crop to different sizes later...and 8x10 is almost a square so pretend you are shooting a square and you will be OK. If you have a third, put it on a boom or mount it very high and slash the back...point it at the middle.

Use modifiers that throw light everywhere...which usually means umbrellas. Have all of that set up and ideally, test before you try to assemble the people...they will not have the patience for you to set up and test on them.

Get them tight and short to the front. If some can sit on a bench or on the ground, whatever...stack them if you can. They need to be tighter than they would ever get in real life so they have to get over 'personal space' for a min or two. Take as many shots as you and they can stand. The chances of getting one with all eyes open is pretty slim regardless but might as well try.

Here is one with a three light set up. Not exactly what you are doing but closest I have handy. You could fit 2-3 times as many people in the space this group is taking...these people were in a semi circle as this was attempting to look like a scene from the play. You can see I had to burn the edges because broad light hits everything, in this case, it lit the people but also the background...very distracting so I had to get rid of that. If you can, set your people up with a clean and distant background. Also this shot uses a very wide lens due to the posing. Normally you do not want this look...you can see the close in people are distorted and the perspective changes to much. That is why I said a 24-70 or thereabouts, and try very hard to keep it at the long end...people will look more 'normal' on the edges.

I'd give you more examples that are closer to the mark but too lazy to go the hard drives now. But you get the idea. There is more to it but that should get you started. Hopefully the very first time you do this will not be when you are 5 mins out from the actual shoot...good luck!

You all are awesome. Thank you so much. This will now be taken indoors (church) due to this crazy weather out here in the Pac. Northwest. I will try both suggestions...Thank you all so much for the feedback.

A ladder might be very useful.