180 Person School Photo - two questions?

lifeinfocus

I am preparing to photograph a 183 person group photo on Jan 28 in a school gym on their bleachers. Pretty good lighting since the bleacher area will also be the school stage. I am not going to bring any additional lighting.

Their are six (6) levels in the bleachers so I have planned to use all six levels with up to forty people in each row and standing at angle to get them close.

Question? What f/stop would be optimal to get good DOF for that many people, keeping in mind that this is a grade school and kids will be eager to move about. I will be using a tripod, remote control. and a wide angle lens.

One lighting issue I will have is that there are three (3) elongated windows behind the top row. I will be shooting around 9:30am and the outside light will not be directly shining through the windows. I am planning on using Spot meter to ensure that background is not an issue. Any ideas?

Appreciate any comments.

Art Scott

when is the shoot??? according to your shoot date given, you are already late for the event


to bad you are not taking additional lighting...as all the lights are going to be down lights and that causes problems with blockey foreheads sunken eyes and lots of different hairdos.....all theses casting shadows onto the faces......do your metering to blow out the windows to ensure that the people are properly exposed or block the Window light with a black background.....

lifeinfocus

Art Scott wrote: »

when is the shoot??? according to your shoot date given, you are already late for the event


to bad you are not taking additional lighting...as all the lights are going to be down lights and that causes problems with blockey foreheads sunken eyes and lots of different hairdos.....all theses casting shadows onto the faces......do your metering to blow out the windows to ensure that the people are properly exposed or block the Window light with a black background.....

Sorry, the date is tomorrow, Jan 28.

Not all the ligths will be down, there is a row of lights pointing toward the bleachers - which eventually also be a stage for school plays.

I have done single and small group portraits so I have enough experience in doing lighting and setting the correct aperture to get some pretty nice results, However, this is a different story.

How do I ensure that I get all of the people in reasonable focus? What would an ideal aperture setting be? f/11, f/13 .....?

divamum

I would take the additional lighting unless there's a really compelling reason not to - better to have and not need than the other way around.... Many school stages are APPALLINGLY badly lit and their "standard" setup is useless for flattering faces and avoiding shadows, no matter how much they might think otherwise (I've faced this repeatedly during school auditorium performances). I would consider the extra lighting as an insurance policy with no harm done if it doesn't get used - ymmv, of course. Another thing might be if there's a concert/choir shell or something which could be set up BEHIND you to act as a giant reflector to augment the existing lighting if necessary.

I'll leave others to speak to the depth of field, but have you checked out to guesstimate it by the numbers? It may give you some ideas http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Best of luck with it - that's a LOT of people to sheepdog!!

adbsgicom

For you initial question of f/stop, I think you can shoot pretty wide and have things work. I may be totally messed up in the calculations though.

If you have a group that is 40' across, and you are shooting 35mm lens, the angle subtended would be 54-degrees. So divide the triangle in half you have a leg that is 20' and an angle of 27 degrees, so that tangent is about 0.50. So that means you'll be about 40' away. With a FF camera, even a f/2.8 you would have huge DOF from 21' to 253' with the focus at 40'.

You can back up with a longer lens, the over DOF doesn't change much. An f/2.8 85mm lens at 100' has a DOF range from 73-156, still plenty.

Hopefully that will allow you a nice fast shutter speed to keep the kids still.....

Edit: Never mind.... Noticed that today was the shoot....
What settings did you end up using?

lifeinfocus

lifeinfocus wrote: »

I am preparing to photograph a 183 person group photo on Jan 28 in a school gym on their bleachers. Pretty good lighting since the bleacher area will also be the school stage. I am not going to bring any additional lighting.

Their are six (6) levels in the bleachers so I have planned to use all six levels with up to forty people in each row and standing at angle to get them close.

Question? What f/stop would be optimal to get good DOF for that many people, keeping in mind that this is a grade school and kids will be eager to move about. I will be using a tripod, remote control. and a wide angle lens.

One lighting issue I will have is that there are three (3) elongated windows behind the top row. I will be shooting around 9:30am and the outside light will not be directly shining through the windows. I am planning on using Spot meter to ensure that background is not an issue. Any ideas?

Appreciate any comments.

Lessons learned:

First of all - the results turned out pretty good but not fantastic.

I had the lights pointed to the 180 plus group adjusted some - but needed to have them arranged even more - not enough light in some areas.

I covered the three long windows - but should have put even more cover on them. I will have to have clone out the windows and dodge a few faces. Not bad.

I needed at least 4 additional people to keep the 180 plus students stationary while I was taking the photos.

One final thing I would like to have done is take some more test shots the day before with about 12 kids in various location on the bleachers.

I used a grey card and that helped tremendously in getting the right color.

I took a Zoom H4N to record some of the school cheers. Just for the fun of it and maybe to do a short video of the photos and audio using Photodex.

I am going to print an 8 x 20 for them. That will give the best resolution.

adbsgicom

Thanks for the update. What settings did you end up using? Will you be able to post your result (and even perhaps the SOOC version)?

divamum

adbsgicom wrote: »

Thanks for the update. What settings did you end up using? Will you be able to post your result (and even perhaps the SOOC version)?

+1 - I'd love to see. That's a mammoth undertaking, so congrats on what sounds like a job well done!