Group lighting.

I will be branching out this next year to include sports team photos. I am

intrested in lighting a group of athletes to do the team photo, then I want to

shoot each one seperatly so recyle would be an issue. Is there a site, artice

or someone here who does this? Is there a way to figure out what I need

without over kill? I don't want to nuke them, but if you had to start over and

wanted to be portable would you use a couple of AB/white lightnings? I am

using a Nikon D2h/D70 and want to trigger them with my pocket wizards. I have

been experimenting with my portable strobes but if I get a hundred kids I

don't want someone telling me there's smoke coming from my speedlight.

Wow that's a lot. One more, the more I read the more confussed I get. If

aperture is the shutter in this case and I want to control my dof to get the

whole group in focus let's say F11 and I can't get it, what are my options?

more light or increasing my ISO? Most article say to open up the aperture, is

I do this I'll loose the dof. As always thanks in advance

Jim

I have been agonizing about the same thing - weather to get 2 AB's 1600s or going for broke with Speedotron Force 10s. I would like to shoot groups of twenty or more and get at least f11-16 at 100 ISO at 1/125 with 60 inch Photek Umbrellas. Any opinions out there ? I'm afraid i'll have to go for the big money !!

Shooting outdoors is easy the problem comes when shooting in a dark gym. I have found that at ISO 100 most gyms are F/1.0 @125th second. Usually the team is wearing white and they want you to shoot them on a white wall painted with semi gloss paint. Yesterday I used a single bare bulb flash to light the gym and shot the team in the center court at ISO 200 100th sec at F/11 with very good result. However it is not uncommon for me to use up to 6-500 watt second monoblocks with large soff boxes or shoot through diffusion. High reflection off the gym floor is also fun, forget about draging the shutter you will pull up aweful color shifts from the floor. The easy way lots of power, several carefully placed lights being mindful of the shadow from each or shoot it with on board flash at the highest flash sync speed you have and get a black background. Good luck, I have found team sports to be the lowest dollar per hour job I do.

All of this is basic photography which requires you to use a light meter and know how to

balance ambient light with strobe. This topic alone needs experience to master. One email

thread will not answer all the questions or teach you what you will need to know. Anyways,

there is no reason to be forced to use 100 iso. You will gain flash power by increasing your

iso to 400. Be carful not to go beyond your flash sync wich is usually 200sec. DOF can be

maximized by wide angle lenses, increaing distance between you and the subject and the

most used is by closing down your aperture.

Okay I've done this a couple dozen times in the last two months. There is no balancing ambient light in a school gym with it reading F 1.0 at iso 100. Beside pulling ambient light in a gym will introduce very strange colors into your image. Shooting high iso will given you noise in shadow detail and using wide angle will distort the people at the edge of the group. In order to achieve depth of field you need to add a lot of light.

Thanks Phillip, Ive been watching the lighting prices for the past year and also researching the websites in my area that do this and I see how the price is really driven down.