Lighting a group of small children

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Carol S

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Carol
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Evening all, quick question on lighting please. I've been asked to do a shoot in our town's medieval Guildhall of children (grand-children of volunteers) in costume 'doing things' (activities etc at a table and looking at artefacts, as opposed to 'smile at camera' shots) in a group as promotional material for future events. Organiser has suggested using lights 'to make images pop'.

The issue of child safeguarding / parental consents is being handled by the venue management and I am happy that this is being dealt with correctly. I am not being paid for this work (I am one of the volunteer photographers) and I have shot with the team before - they know my capabilities and also my limitations and despite the latter are still happy for me to do the shoot.

Being an old building there is not an excess of natural light. The ceilings are too high to bounce flash and the walls are mostly dark (regency blue and green paints, there is also dark wood panelling in places) so the ideas I've come up with/had suggested to me so far are:

1. Use a large reflective umbrella (60"? - will buy or hire) with a flash head (I have two Lencarta 300w) to bounce light back to the group. Pro for this (as I see it) is that the umbrella/flash will be far enough away from the children not to intimidate them. Con is loss of light through the bounce, and fall-off
2. Use a large shoot-through umbrella. Pro: more light, con: will need to be nearer the children and don't want to be in their faces.
3. Use an on-camera flash with a soft box
4. A camera shop in town suggested that I hire an ice-light (or buy a cheaper version). I haven't worked with LED lights before so have no clue as to whether this will provide sufficient light. If this would work, one benefit I can see is of not having a distracting flash.
5. ?

I have two 85cm x 85cm soft boxes - but worry that these might seem too intimidating as are quite large.

All advice and other ideas/suggestions gratefully received with thanks.
 
Well, I haven't seen the venue, so my thoughts may be nonsense, but...
The important thing to retain here is the atmosphere and the location, you don't want these shots to end up looking like studio shots, so you need to include the surroundings, and they need to be lit.. Basically there are a couple of different ways of doing this, and both are valid.
1. Use the light that's already there as the main light source, so that everything looks natural and the background doesn't go black. This will probably require both a high ISO setting and fairly long exposures, with possible impact on image quality. But it will work, and adding just a tiny bit of flash, off camera, just to put light where you want it, will make the shots more interesting. If you adopt this approach then your exposure will be for the ambient light, and the flash will be at a very low setting.
2. Use your flash as the main light source, but use a long-ish shutter speed to make the most of the ambient light. Use one flash head on your subject, a 60" reflective umbrella, off camera and at quite a long distance from your subjects, will be fine for this. Put the second flash head much further back, behind the kids, to light the background as well as you can.

There's no point in using a small softbox on camera, it will look very unnatural and the light will fall off far too fast. Using an ice light or similar would be a total waste of time, and far more distracting than flash.
 
Garry Edwards said:
Well, I haven't seen the venue, so my thoughts may be nonsense, but...
The important thing to retain here is the atmosphere and the location, you don't want these shots to end up looking like studio shots, so you need to include the surroundings, and they need to be lit.. Basically there are a couple of different ways of doing this, and both are valid.
1. Use the light that's already there as the main light source, so that everything looks natural and the background doesn't go black. This will probably require both a high ISO setting and fairly long exposures, with possible impact on image quality. But it will work, and adding just a tiny bit of flash, off camera, just to put light where you want it, will make the shots more interesting. If you adopt this approach then your exposure will be for the ambient light, and the flash will be at a very low setting.
2. Use your flash as the main light source, but use a long-ish shutter speed to make the most of the ambient light. Use one flash head on your subject, a 60" reflective umbrella, off camera and at quite a long distance from your subjects, will be fine for this. Put the second flash head much further back, behind the kids, to light the background as well as you can.

There's no point in using a small softbox on camera, it will look very unnatural and the light will fall off far too fast. Using an ice light or similar would be a total waste of time, and far more distracting than flash.
Click to expand...

Both good and realistic options I think. I would go for the second. I'd guess the problem with the first may be longish shutter speeds, too long for a decent hit-rate with active kids. Either way, shoot loads. You'll inevitably get caught out with movement blur, missed focus, blinking etc etc.
 
My first thought for this was on-camera flash set for a little fill (i.e. TTL w/ -1 to -2 FEC). Of course this may/will create small/hard/centered catchlights, but they are easy enough to remove if necessary.

My second thought is bare light off camera for off axis fill... as long as the "main light" is the ambient level and just a bit of fill/extra is added with the strobes, then there's no real need to modify/soften them. The only reason I would bounce the lights (umbrella/wall/etc) is if I needed more scatter to cover more area than the bare light will.
 
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HoppyUK said:
Both good and realistic options I think. I would go for the second. I'd guess the problem with the first may be longish shutter speeds, too long for a decent hit-rate with active kids. Either way, shoot loads. You'll inevitably get caught out with movement blur, missed focus, blinking etc etc.
Click to expand...
The 2nd option would be my choice too, but the first option might seem easier, for someone who hasn't done it before.
sk66 said:
My first thought for this was on-camera flash set for a little fill (i.e. TTL w/ -1 to -2 FEC). Of course this may/will create small/hard/centered catchlights, but they are easy enough to remove if necessary.

My second thought is bare light off camera for off axis fill... as long as the "main light" is the ambient level and just a bit of fill/extra is added with the strobes, then there's no real need to modify/soften them. The only reason I would bounce the lights (umbrella/wall/etc) is if I needed more scatter to cover more area than the bare light will.
Click to expand...
Your first thought wouldn't work unless a long lens is being used, because the fall-off of light would be too great if close to the subjects.
Your second thought is basically my first option, as set out above. As Richard says, their will be motion blur, out of focus shots and generally a higher failure rate than with my second suggestion, although that too will have a high failure rate.

My overall suggestion is that Carol has a practice session, see what works and gain a bit of experience of this type of shooting.
 
Garry Edwards said:
The 2nd option would be my choice too, but the first option might seem easier, for someone who hasn't done it before.

Your first thought wouldn't work unless a long lens is being used, because the fall-off of light would be too great if close to the subjects.
Your second thought is basically my first option, as set out above. As Richard says, their will be motion blur, out of focus shots and generally a higher failure rate than with my second suggestion, although that too will have a high failure rate.

My overall suggestion is that Carol has a practice session, see what works and gain a bit of experience of this type of shooting.
Click to expand...

Very good advice, even if it's in an empty room - so long as it's the same room ;)
 
Thank you all for your helpful advice; it has all been very useful and is appreciated. Really nice to have positive comments and advice rather than the negative ones which so often pop up on this type of thread :)

I'm going to run with Garry's idea nr 2 - the reflective umbrella. Out of my list this was my preferred option at the start but as a lighting newbie I worried that I was barking completely up the wrong tree (story of my life!), hence the request for advice.

Garry Edwards said:
Put the second flash head much further back, behind the kids, to light the background as well as you can.
Click to expand...
@Garry Edwards What modifier would you suggest for this second light? (Lencarta 300w smart flash)


Garry Edwards said:
My overall suggestion is that Carol has a practice session, see what works and gain a bit of experience of this type of shooting.
Click to expand...
Luckily I have relatively easy access to the Guildhall (I am a member of the project team) so this is something I am going to arrange, in the same room and hopefully at the same time of day as the shoot. Shoot is on 5th April so I have a month to practice.
 
[QUOTE="Carol S, post: 8106918, member: 55927"

@Garry Edwards What modifier would you suggest for this second light? (Lencarta 300w smart flash)


[/QUOTE]
Softbox, reflective umbrella or something similar, it doesn't really matter.
Think of it as a row of street lights, going off into the distance. The one nearest to you is lighting up what's immediately in front of you, the others are lighting the way ahead so that you can see further. Street lights aren't in any kind of modifier, so we can see them.
What I'm proposing is a light that will light your subject, then another one some distance behind (and possibly a long distance) that will light the venue into the distance, to show depth, size and to stop the background going black, it's as simple as that. The effect of the second "street lamp" will be obvious but, as the light will be in a modifier that pushes all of the light towards the back, the actual light won't be visible. As previously mentioned, you will need to use a fairly slow shutter speed too, to make the most of whatever ambient light there may be. If the ambient light is daylight, the colour should work out OK, but if (as is usual) there is a mixture of daylight and artificial light then the colours in the background will be off - but it won't matter and may even improve the shots. I suggest a shutter speed of maybe 1/30th or 1/15th, but your tests will clarify this.

So, please shoot your tests and post the results here.
 
MidnightUK said:
How did this pan out in the end?
Click to expand...

So far I've done the test shoot (in the same room as the planned shoot but unfortunately at a different time of day - due to building works going on entry times are currently restricted so we used another group activity there as a dress rehearsal for the lighting). I used the reflective umbrella behind me and a softbox nearer the back and was satisfied with the results - they won't win me any awards but the organiser is happy. I'm not allowed to share pics yet as organiser keeps tight control on what is released to the public and all photos are currently being drip-fed as teasers to the building's official opening in July.

The actual shoot with the kids is on 5th April and I will report back :)
 
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