Lighting groups at weddings

swintonphoto

I need some suggestions on how to do better with images like this:



I often have weddings where the inside of the church where they want group shots is so dark that I can't get results in the background I am happy with. As this shot demonstrates, my flash did the majority of the lighting. However, I often see many wedding photographers' images that have nice bright backgrounds. Any pointers on how I could do this?

pathfinder

Jon, I am not seeing a picture yet.

Are external links turned on in your gallery - the coding looks correct.

I liked the Old International Indian School Remembered Gallery in your smuggy gallery. Nicely done.

swintonphoto

Hopefully that fixed it.

SloYerRoll

It helps to know how your shooting if your looking for help. Looks like your strobe is on a bracket w/ a diffuser but that's all I can tell.

Try shifting over to Aperture priority, open up your aperture to the widest size you are comfortable with to keep a sharp shot. This will make the strobe work less and allow more ambient light in. A bonus to this is that it narrows you DOF and will help that distracting clutter in the b/g go away as well.

You can also go fully manual, lower your flash power level and underexpose the entire shot (both the subjects and b/g) so everything is underexposed by a stop or two then push it back to correct exposure in post. This is relatively easy if you take a series of shots like that. Since you only need to adjust one shot then copy the changes over to other images. THis will only work if your entire setup is in manual. (at least on my setup)

I'd work on getting the wedding party out of that crummy b/g and outside to something more asthetically pleasing. Right now there's too much going on in the b/g. If you brighten this up, your just going to add confusion to the shot.

-Jon

i_worship_the_King

^ I'm not seeing any special flowers, crazy candles or even a lit-up cross. Why keep it inside where you know the shots are going to be sub-par. How about a garden or something outside? I seriously doubt these people have any clue whats going on in the photography world - they're going to be MUCH happier with great shots in a different location than decent shots in their choice of location.


OR, from what I hear you could just get a D3 and shoot at ISO6400

Art Scott

Could you afford a couple of slaved strobes, like to inexpensive vivatar 285hv with an optical slave attached, or radio slave if you want the expense and also the confidence that no one else can cause them to fire (probably)......I have used 2 285 and also used 2- sunpak 622 for back lighting in dimly lit churches....but as mentioned above...if it isn't a gorgeous santuary then take them out side if possible.......remember that background doesn't need to be as bright as the foreground and subject.........another thing I did was to meter for the whites dress of the bride and stop down another stop or 2 to throw that background black....makes those shots look more like they were done in a studio.............just a suggestion.

i_worship_the_King

^ i shall try this metering trick. Intriguiging. How would you go about metering only the dress? Just point it at it and check the exposure on the body?

swintonphoto

Thanks for the ideas everyone. I think im going to practice all of them before my next wedding.

Art Scott

i_worship_the_King wrote:

^ i shall try this metering trick. Intriguiging. How would you go about metering only the dress? Just point it at it and check the exposure on the body?

Actually you're not metering the dress but the light falling on the dress(sorry for the mis-info there :-}} )....I use a hand-held incident meter (minolta color meter) which meters both ambient light and flash separetly or together.......then I go from there...I did and do still bracket shots (especially now wtih the advent of digital, I can bracket to my hearts content),,,,,,,,and normally my backlighting flashes areset to amnual full power, but are far enuff from the actual background that they do not over-expose it at all.................

SloYerRoll

Or you could just switch over to spot metering on your camera.
Point, meter, adjust, shoot.

mmmatt

I'm going to jump into this one as well as I have similar questions... I have 2 580's with an st e2, as well as some cheezy ebay ac strobes. I have umbrellas, mounts and light stands for the 580's.
What about hair lighting in a situation like this?

Matt

Art Scott

SloYerRoll wrote:

Or you could just switch over to spot metering on your camera.
Point, meter, adjust, shoot.

Reflective metering doesn't quite cut it for using flash.....the reason I still use my hand-held incident meter(s)........I am still old school to the point that my meters are wired to the flash via a 30-50 foot pc cord for firing the flash from subject position.....gotta up grade some day before the cables quit working due to age and those tiny wires inside becoming broken from all the abuse.:D
At weddings I am always in manual mode.....except for the ceremony shots which are average metered and still I bracket those....but that is just me.................

Scott_Quier

Indoors - Flash --> Manul Mode all the way
Under-exposing a shot is under-exposing a shot. Trying to get detail in dark areas of an under-exposed shot is fraught with all sort of noise problems.

Suggestion:

• Shoot manual mode. Set flash and aperture to properly expose her dress and/or her face. This means setting the aperture and flash such that they work together to get the exposure you want there.
• Meter the ambient light in the background. For the aperture you have selected for the foreground, what would you need in shutter-speed to properly expose the background?
• Because the background is so busy, it might be a good idea to increase the shutter speed by a stop. This has the added advantage of helping to freeze the motion of your subjects.
• If it's not there already, try setting your ISO to something like 800. This will greatly improve your ability to capture detail in the background and, on a properly exposed image, the grain in an ISO 800 photograph is pretty insignificant.

So, what's this get you? You get the people properly exposed (like you already have) and it brings the detail of the background out of the deep shadows.

Something to keep in mind when you balance your flash with ambient in this (or any other) manner - the flash and ambient light is of two different colors. This will usually manifest as the WB on the foreground being correct and the background (because it's usually tungsten light) will be quite a bit warmer. This is not, necessarily, a bad thing - just something to keep in mind.

LiquidAir

When working with on camera flash, you need to remember the inverse squared law of light. For every doubling of distance from your flash, the light falls off by two stops. In practice here's how it works out:

Lets say your subjects are 6 feet from the camera. If the wall is 9 feet from the camera (3 feet behind your subjects) it will be 1 stop underexposed, if the wall is 12 feet from the camera it will be 2 stops underexposed, if the wall is 17 feet from the camera it will be 3 stops underexposed, and so forth.

So, what to do? I use four different approaches depending on the situation.

1. Put your subjects closer to the background. Personally I like the background to be 1 stop darker than my subject, so posing 3 feet in front of the background often works well. This works best with the flash directly above the camera shot through an umbrella to minimize the shadows on the background.

2. Light the room rather than the subject. This is essentially how an Stofen Omni-Bounce works, but it only works in small spaces. When I am lighting a room usually use two strobes, bouncing them if I can and with translucent umbrellas if I can't. To light a large space is going to require careful placement and some hefty strobes.

3. Use a second strobe for the background. This works fine with flat background, but gets tough if the background is complicated and will show shadows. Again, an umbrella can help quite a bit here.

4. Balance the flash with the ambient light. When I am doing this I tend to run one stop above the ambient. So if the room meters ISO 1600, f/2.8, 1/60s, I am exposing at ISO 800 f/2.8, 1/60s and adjusting the power on the flash for proper exposure on the subject.

Pixel Popper

I'm certainly no expert at this subject matter, so you can take what I say with a BIG grain of salt, but I have shot in a lot of low light situations lately with just one hot-shoe mounted flash, and have found this to be a workable solution for catching the ambient light in the background.

First, I point the flash head upward, with a white bounce card mounted behind it, reflecting toward the subject.

I set the ISO at 800, with an aperture of f/4, and a shutter speed of 1/25 to 1/30.

This combination (Usually, there are always variables) generally gives me well exposed people, the flash freezes the motion, and the slower shutter speed allows the ambient light to play a more significant role in my composition. With the strobe shooting upward, or up and to the right or left, you get diffused light bouncing from the ceiling and / or walls, or a combination of both, and the bounce card gives you fill light to cut facial shadows. If you're lucky, you can angle that flash head so you get the effect of diffused light coming from three directions (ceiling, wall, and bounce card) at the same time, with only one flash unit. You also lose the bluish/cyan reflections on the skin for a more natural, three dimensional look.

Just something to try, especially if you don't have all the other off-camera lighting gear. You might need to do a couple of test shots first, then slighty adjust your settings as necessary, but I think you could get some mileage out of this technique.

Have you seen this video about how to create the PERFECT bounce card? Someone just shared it with me the other day on another thread, and, as simple as it is, has changed the way I approach my work. It's well worth a look.

Follow this link to: "A Better Bounce Card."

Happy Shooting!