help!

[Riff Raff]

I have been asked at short notice to photograph a group of three people together. The setting is in the living room of one of them. I have 3 lights, a black background, 2 soft boxes, a large reflector, a silver umbrella and a couple of shoot through umbrellas.

The problems i see are firstly, the room is quite small, maybe 16ft x 16ft and secondly, I have forgotten nearly everything I have learned about studio photography! I had a brief dalliance with it a couple of years ago whilst doing a course at college and bought the equipment at the time. I played with the equipment for a month or so before it was put into the loft and have concentrated on wildlife and street photography since.

What I am asking is what basic things should I look out for? I don't have a light meter so will be relying on the camera lcd for levels and the images will be from waist up. I need to know the basic things like how would you set the lights up, which focal length is preferable and what shutter speed\ aperture is recommended. The lights I have are quite powerful and even at their lowest setting I have more than enough light so do I close the aperture or increase my shutter speed to counteract this?

Sorry to sound like such a noob but as I say, this is very short notice for me. I appreciate any advice anyone may give and hopefully i will leave the lights out and use them more after this.

Thanks

Kev

 

[Simon photo]

Depends on what you want in terms of final image, the possibility is endless.
I have a set of cheap monoblock studio flashes, three 250w and struggle to reign them in at close quarters, i always use a corded flash meter to determine my settings, your heads should sync at 250th don't know what heads you have? Some are faster.
Faster shutter speed than that will usually catch the mirror/shutter half flight.
Aperture will knock the stops off the light but if your looking for shallow depth of field and your lights are still too bright then consider less heads, filtration or even masking your boxes or brollies with cloth.

Totally missed the part about you not having a meter. Well, are they flash heads or continuous? If they are flash work it out with a rough guess, say f11 and check your historgram for the levels. Try turning your highlight and shadow warnings on too, that should help you to balance things out. But. Get the gear out and have a practice before the shoot. You can check everything is working ok and get some creases out of your backdrop while your at it

 

[adamgasson]

Kev, shoot in manual mode on your camera. ISO at 100, shutter speed at 1/160 and then adjust your aperture to expose the lighting. At a guess, and without knowing how powerful your lights are, you'll be around f/8 to f/11 - but do test shots and check your histograms. As you're shooting against a background I wouldn't be worried about shooting with a large depth of field. The only issue you might have is light spilling on to the backdrop. Given the size of the room try and get the subjects as far away from the backdrop as you can as you can't really move the lights around that much.

The shutter speed only affects the ambient light (i.e. the light already in the room) not the studio lights. Don't go above 1/200 as your camera will not sync with the lights correctly. The sync speed is down to the camera, not the lights.

As for focal length try and shoot on a standard to long length. Wider lengths will result in distortion and you'll end up with people with large heads, bendy legs or bulging bellies!

I'd position two studio lights with softboxes at 45 degrees to the subject (so one each side of you when you shoot). This'll be quite a soft, flat lighting setup and will be flattering and easy to work with. It will result in light hitting the backdrop but I think this is a tradeoff I'd be willing to make in exchange for an easy lighting setup.

 

[gman]

Watch out for your depth of field if you are using a longer focal length but have to shoot quite close to them. This tool is quite handy and mind that as there are three of them it's easy for one to lean forward slightly and be out of focus.

The controls on your lights are what should be used to control exposure for this and I'd only use the camera to compensate if I don't have enough power, whereby I'd simply start increasing the ISO.