casual, indoor group shot

Elaine

I have fiddled with this one for quite awhile (swapped out four faces, cloning stuff off walls, etc...). I would appreciate some more eyes...anything else I should address here?

Elaine

I warmed it up a bit. (And desaturated the table cloth.) Is this an improvement or ?

adbsgicom

If you want to go a bit more nuts, you could desaturate the blue tablecloth to just dark grey...

Like the warmer image a bit more...

What did you do for lighting this space? Just curious.

Qarik

my 1st thought was that there was blue cast. The warming up helped. Still the blue jackets and jean almost overpower the shot. Perhaps take the blue channel down in saturation or warm it up even more? same with the red to lesser extent. The whites seem s bit to bright as well hehe upon a 2nd and 3rd look.

Elaine

adbsgicom wrote:

If you want to go a bit more nuts, you could desaturate the blue tablecloth to just dark grey...

Like the warmer image a bit more...

What did you do for lighting this space? Just curious.

I like that idea. I'll give it a shot. (edited shot above)

Well, I had a large wall of glass doors and windows right behind me (thankfully), and I think I bounced my flash (from camera) up to the ceiling (and maybe a tiny bit behind me?), which was high and white. I took a ton of candid shots in this space and tried bouncing my flash, but the ceiling was a bit too high to be as effective as I'd hoped. So, I was underexposed on pretty much everything. But, I did shoot raw. These group shots were exposed just about right, due to the windows. But, I shot at f/6.3, ISO 1000 and 1/80. Not exactly ideal, but I did the best I knew how!

Nikolai

Lighting wise you're fine!
The problem with the group shots is the eye contact. That is why it's kinda imperative (at least on the paid gigs) to take several shots while having cmaera on a tripod/stand and insisting that everybody look at the camera. Then at least you'd have a chance to replace a couple of wandering eyes by borrowing them from another frame.

adbsgicom

How high were your ceilings? My daughter had a Parent Watch day for a cheer class she takes. The gym is very dim (esp at 5pm now) and I bounced the flash off the wall behind me that was about 10' or more and it lit the kids who were about 10' in front of me rather well. Key is upping your ISO. I shot about 2000 but because the exposure was good, the noise wasn't much of an issue.

When you bounce you have to set the FEC up. I ended up pushing it at about +1-2/3 for most of them. THe flash worked its butt off (proablly shooting very near full charge most of the time), but it worked well. If you do it this way, keep the camera in manual and meter to 0EV or even a little dimmer, and the flash can provide the main light..

Elaine

Nikolai wrote:

Lighting wise you're fine!
The problem with the group shots is the eye contact. That is why it's kinda imperative (at least on the paid gigs) to take several shots while having cmaera on a tripod/stand and insisting that everybody look at the camera. Then at least you'd have a chance to replace a couple of wandering eyes by borrowing them from another frame.

Thanks, Nik. Glad the lighting looks OK.
I did take a lot of this grouping and I've already replaced four faces due to eye contact issues. I'm not worried about the kids. As far as I can tell, the only adult not looking is the guy second from right (back row). And he didn't look at me the whole time! I did make a point of saying that everyone needed to look at my camera, but...? I have one more larger group shot that doesn't have eye contact issues because basically everyone is in the shot. That one just has eyes-being-shut issues, which I'm going to work on next.

Elaine

adbsgicom wrote:

How high were your ceilings? My daughter had a Parent Watch day for a cheer class she takes. The gym is very dim (esp at 5pm now) and I bounced the flash off the wall behind me that was about 10' or more and it lit the kids who were about 10' in front of me rather well. Key is upping your ISO. I shot about 2000 but because the exposure was good, the noise wasn't much of an issue.

When you bounce you have to set the FEC up. I ended up pushing it at about +1-2/3 for most of them. THe flash worked its butt off (proablly shooting very near full charge most of the time), but it worked well. If you do it this way, keep the camera in manual and meter to 0EV or even a little dimmer, and the flash can provide the main light..

If you can tell in the above pic, the wall goes up quite a ways above the doorway (on the right) and then the ceiling peaks in the middle of the room even higher...maybe 15-18 feet?

I shot in manual and bumped the FEC up over +1. The thing I found tricky was dealing with the natural light coming in from that one end of the room where the glass doors/windows were. It was nice to have the light, but I couldn't settle in to certain settings on my camera/flash, because as I moved around the room, the lighting changed...a lot! And sometimes I'd be closer to my subjects and sometimes farther away. So, I'd go from having mostly natural light and just needing a little fill to having completely backlit shots to needing almost all light from the flash. I wonder how it would have been to set the flash up in a certain spot in the room and just worked with it off camera. Anyway, as I'm still learning this flash stuff, I appreciate your input!

Elaine

Qarik wrote:

my 1st thought was that there was blue cast. The warming up helped. Still the blue jackets and jean almost overpower the shot. Perhaps take the blue channel down in saturation or warm it up even more? same with the red to lesser extent. The whites seem s bit to bright as well hehe upon a 2nd and 3rd look.

Thanks, Qarik. Do you feel like the skin tones are overpowered by blue, or are you just seeing a lot of blue because of the clothing? White clothing is not my favorite in photographs, especially groups where it just pops out here and there. When it's exposed as white, it comes off brighter than skin tones and draws the eye. I've tried toning them down a bit, but I also don't want them to look dirty. Hmmm... I'll give it another look.

jeffreaux2

In the second version....I think the WB is fine.

As far as the lighting itself....I think you did as well as is possible with a single bounced flash. Great job on that!


Clothing.....I prefer even white to shirts that have logos or writing....but alas...it IS a casual portrait grouping, and it is what it is eh?

Elaine

jeffreaux2 wrote:

In the second version....I think the WB is fine.

As far as the lighting itself....I think you did as well as is possible with a single bounced flash. Great job on that!


Clothing.....I prefer even white to shirts that have logos or writing....but alas...it IS a casual portrait grouping, and it is what it is eh?

Thanks, Jeff. I agree with you on the writing/logos. Some people took this a bit more seriously than others! As I understood it, everyone was to wear red, white, blue or some combination, so the group would be somewhat coordinated. Ah well.

divamum

Does a dark vignette help at all here (perhaps even doing a "custom shape" one in CS3 if you have it, rather than the standard-oval-circle in LR)? Just a thought.

(OT: did you get my reply to your PM last week? Let me know if there's anything else I can help with! )

Photometric

First off, great looking picture. Well done. Larger groups are difficult.

2 things I would recommend if I may.

On the left side, I would've had the Husband and Wife side to side instead of the wife in front of the husband to balance the second row out. Not that it has to be balanced out but just I'm a symmetry nut.

I would've had the boys on one knee instead of sitting. It brings their shoulders up to cover any unflattering areas of the adults sitting, and it also focus's their attention more on the camera and what they are doing. I can see you had some trouble getting them to focus as Grandma has to have her hand on one of the children's shoulder to get him to settle down (am I correct?)

It sounds like you did very well with difficult lighting conditions. In the future, if you're having trouble with light spilling into the room, you can buy some cheap wood (moulding works great) and cheap large black sheets of project paper from a local party or craft store and some masking tape and create a very cheap light blocker to help control the light.

Elaine

divamum wrote:

Does a dark vignette help at all here (perhaps even doing a "custom shape" one in CS3 if you have it, rather than the standard-oval-circle in LR)? Just a thought.

(OT: did you get my reply to your PM last week? Let me know if there's anything else I can help with! )

It actually has quite a bit of a vignette already, but I haven't tried a custom one in CS3. Thanks for the thought!

PMing you back...:D

Elaine

Photometric wrote:

First off, great looking picture. Well done. Larger groups are difficult.

2 things I would recommend if I may.

On the left side, I would've had the Husband and Wife side to side instead of the wife in front of the husband to balance the second row out. Not that it has to be balanced out but just I'm a symmetry nut.

I would've had the boys on one knee instead of sitting. It brings their shoulders up to cover any unflattering areas of the adults sitting, and it also focus's their attention more on the camera and what they are doing. I can see you had some trouble getting them to focus as Grandma has to have her hand on one of the children's shoulder to get him to settle down (am I correct?)

It sounds like you did very well with difficult lighting conditions. In the future, if you're having trouble with light spilling into the room, you can buy some cheap wood (moulding works great) and cheap large black sheets of project paper from a local party or craft store and some masking tape and create a very cheap light blocker to help control the light.

Thanks, Photometric! Thanks for pointing out some things to look for next time. I am not a good poser in the moment, and I so wish I could go back and scootch some of the back row people to the left. It's too bunched on the right/back corner! And now I see what you mean about the second row, too. I actually don't think Grandma's hand was there to settle down the child, but I could be wrong. I think it was more a matter of just showing connection, rather than everyone standing/sitting so separately. The two boys on the left have some special needs (developmental/social issues), so trying to direct them much wasn't very successful, and I was just glad to have them stationary!
Thanks for the comments/suggestions!

Elaine

And here's one more of a larger grouping...




I swapped 4 faces/eyes in this one as well. Maybe I'll try a B&W version?
I have much to learn with this type of shooting, but for this effort, I think I'm actually satisfied!