Lighting an Indoor Shooting Range

[Niloticus1]

Hi Folks,

I'll freely admit that I'm very inexperienced when it comes to indoor photography, so apologies in advance!

I'm UK based so most of my shooting is outdoor clay pigeon. I recently had the opportunity to fire some more exotic firearms on a visit to Poland.

The range we were visiting appeared to be outdoors but turned out to be a relatively dark building (the shooter is lit from behind by strip lights) opening out to an outdoor range.

I didn't have any means of lighting the shooting booths and the camera struggled accordingly. I was under a lot of time pressure when setting up so didn't have the time to take test shots before I had to scuttle back behind the booths.

I plan on returning later this year and would like to try for some better images.

As I'll be shooting video as well I'd like to set up a constant light source. I think my best option is maybe pointing a diffused light source back towards the shooter from their front. I assume an LED panel would do the trick, I'll probably go for an Amazon job, Viltrox or similar as this won't be heavily used. Some of the shooting will be full auto machine pistols and I'd really like to try and catch some of the muzzle flash etc.

Cam setup is a Fuji XT2 with a 10-24 lens on a tripod, remotely triggered. I'd like enough light to be able to go to higher shutter speeds as I can shoot up to 14fps with a grip.

Any advice would be gratefully received!

Cheers

Dave

 

[Garry Edwards]

Well, obviously you can't have a bright continuous light source in front of the shooter, who needs to be able to see . . . but it could be off to the side, which is probably the best (easy) option and which will also make the most of the smoke.

Using high shutter speeds won't work unless you also use incredibly high ISO, LED lights have far less power than their marketing usually claims.

And capturing muzzle flash will be difficult to, using nitro - the dim LED lights are brighter than the muzzle flash.
Personally I'd go the other way, by all means use LED but use a shutter speed of maybe 1/2 second, getting the shooters to fire as soon as you tell them to, to capture the muzzle flash and smoke. If you want really dramatic results, get the shooters to use black powder instead of nitro.

BTW, the guy in your example shot really doesn't know how to hold it does he?