What's the fix?

3rdPlanetPhotography · November 18, 2005

Here I had a group of people in a casual living room environment. Shooting with a 20d and Sigma DG 500 flash along with Sigma 28-70 3.5f(i think) lens. I run into this every time a group and just a flash.

My guess is the white wall kills the lighting in this photo. Everyone seems to be shaded pretty dark. Woud my best option be to use studio lights?

EXIF Info

Thanks
kc7dji

JimM · November 18, 2005

Looks to me like you did about as good as you could. Studio strobes could help, but your exposure looks pretty good to me. The white wall on the background is directly behind them, making the image look flatter. My best thought is take them outside and still use the flash. That is a pretty big group for a living room shot.

You might also try to put the bigger people toward the rear, as they hide the smaller people.

John Mueller · November 18, 2005

Was this in the eve or daylight?
Looks like a large window on the right.
Let some light in, reflect it and slow the shutter a tad more.
And yes,regroup them

Sam · November 18, 2005

First, sell these people a photograph for their poor, blank, empty wall!

Move the soda cans, and glasses. Move the good looking woman to the front.

:

You could also try levels, and maybe a crop. Here is a quick example.

David_S85 · November 18, 2005

I'm no expert in people photography, but...
For now...
For post editing help, the free PTLens plug-in has a great anti-vignetting tool, that would go a long way to even out the wide angle / flash conflict.

The next time...
It is unfortunate that the big guy with the big bright white shirt is in the up front and center position. The flash got him good but that is bad for the rest of the subjects. To see the effect of what would be of the photo if he wasn't in front, place your hand in front of him (on the monitor) and block him out temporarily and you'll see that the lighting seems more even. Next time someone is wearing bright colors, try to place them near the back, to minimize the brightness or try to place someone with more neutral clothing in front of them.

3rdPlanetPhotography · November 18, 2005

I'm getting good feedback... thanks to everyone. Can't have enough notes.

TOF guy · November 18, 2005

kc7dji wrote:

I run into this every time a group and just a flash. Everyone seems to be shaded pretty dark.

The first thing that my eyes see in this pic is a lot of "boring" white wall and yet the group was cut-off (front people have no legs).

Caveat about what follows: I assume that the Canon system is like Nikon's with which I'm familiar (they're often much less different than people want to believe). Also we don't know how the mode used (manual, aperture-priority, ...), and how flash is set. I assume that you were not in manual mode, and you used 3d color matrix metering and either BL-TTL or iTTL (somebody will translate the Nikon jargon into Canon's for me, please !). We also don't know if you've bounced the flash or not.

You asked about lighting. The key feature to remember is that the amount of light that a surface gets from the direct illumination from a flash decreases very quickly with distance: with the square of subject-flash distance to be exact.

Let's say the front subject is 5 feet from you, and the person furthest away from you is 10 feet from you. That means the front subject is twice as close from you than the person near the back wall. That also means that the light from direct illumination from the flash has lost 2*2 = 4 times = 2 stops its power in that distance.

I think that the 20D+flash did what they're supposed to do: balance the lighting between foreground and background. The flash sends preflash to analyze how the scene is lit. In the center-weighted mode, the 20D+flash system should detect that different parts of the scene reflect less light from the preflashes than others and interpretate correctly this as parts of the scene are at a very different distance from the flash. The camera will then request relatively little power from the flash, because anything more will seriously upset the balance between the background (which would look dark otherwise) and the foreground. It did a very good job, IMHO, allowing for some some uneven illumination which is not too excessive. But the scene ends up being dark.

Solutions:
- increase ISO, so that the capture of the scene depends less on the flash light and more on the ambient light.
- bounce the flash against the ceiling. This will make the ratio of light reaching the foreground and the background much more even.
- spread the subjects laterally as much as possible, so as to minimize the differences in distance from the flash between the people in the front and the most remote part of the pic (as far as the flash is concerned, that wall may be part of the scene).
- additional lighting ? That is not something we always carry with us and/or have the time to set.

I'm sure others will come with additional ideas which I haven't thought of.

Thierry

Andyman · November 20, 2005

I'm not sure what you think, but I hope this helps a little. Just taking what I thought could be improved and did it.

I cropped it, took out the lamps, changed his shirt to a more neutral color, tried to soften the highlights, lighten the rear faces, and some slight saturation and color fixes here and there. The shirt still looks a little out of place.

Your photo isn't bad at all, kc7dji. I think you did a good job; and hey, you've got them all smiling

:.

What's the fix?

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