Metered group shot. Fill Needed? Opinions please

OK So I have an bag of tips to filter through from all of the

questions that I have been posting, I hope that I am not annoying

anyone. I really appreciate your comments.

 

If I am shooting a set up group photo at a wedding and I have

metered the shot correctly with my hand held meter and then set my

camera according to my meter; Maybe I even bracketed the shot +-1.

Is there any reason what so ever to use a flash, fill flash or

otherwise?

At a wedding:

 

 

a. in a church?

 

 

b. on the beach?

 

 

c. in a reception hall?

 

 

Will you expect the lab to 'correct the color' without a bit of help from your camera's flash?

 

 

What type of film are you going to use?

Shooting in a Church, Portra 400, (maybe shot at 320 or even 200) 70-200 2.8

Are the meter readings even from side to side of the group, or at least with a half

stop frm the brightest end to the darkest?

If so, and the combination of ISO=Aperture+ shutter speed is enough to getthe depth

of fild you need and to get everyone in focus and short enough to prevent blur from

motion, AND you like the quality of light, then no you don't need any additional

lighting, flash or otherwise.

In other words, you will probably will need some flash (and a tripod, and a wider

lens).

And you don't want to be bracketing group shots - it's another unwanted variable to

add to the blinking bride, the yawning aunt and the gurning pageboy.

 

Each frame you shoot of a group shot might be the only one where everyone looks

normal - if that frame is underexposed because you shot it at -1 then you're screwed.

AS usual, I agree with Ellis, but I suspect that if the group is in a church you will not like the quality of the ambient light and therefore would want to add light, not only as fill, but more than likely as the main light, and let the ambient light become your fill.

In a church, with 400 speed film, your ambient exposure will usually be somewhere around f8 at 1/4 of a second unless you have a lot of window light. You need at least f8 for depth on a group, and 1/4 is getting pretty long unless you are on a tripod.

 

I would leave the settings on the camera at f8 for 1/4 and bump in enough light to give you f 8 on your meter. you will have a well exposed negative that will print well and give you plenty of detail in the shadows and the backgroun, unless it is really really dark in there.

 

remember, color neg film is pretty forgiving on overexposure. you can often get a professional quality print with up to 3 stops of overexposure. but it is very unforgiving of underexposure and you can really start to tell with even 1 stop of underexposure. so don't be afraid to get some light on that group and don't be afraid to use pretty long exposures when in the church if you have the camera on a tripod.

 

Kevin

The true answer here is: You don't have the flashpower to do a fill of a group at any iso speed. Your camera syncs at 1/250th, you need about f6.3-f8 of flashpower on that group at iso 100. That may be 400ws. That is 4 Vivitar 283s. You can't do it. Later on what you can do...

Mr. Borcherding, where did you come from? Any time I see answers from you I can't make sense of anything you say in a real modern world perspective! For example, his camera is not limited to 250th for flash shooting, and in a church it is easy to use a single 283 for fill at 5.6 and an eigth. What in the world are you talking about with four 283's being used as "fill"? What kind of "fill" comes from 400 or however many watt seconds? Do you expect Mr. Cromwell to carry a monolight around with him or something? And while we're here, are you going to daisy chain this thread with your dozen or so posts? Sheesh, go away!!!<div></div>

Mr. Lambert, your recommendation is for shutter-dragging. You propose to take a slow exposure of the group inside of the church, then also use your flash. The problem is, this will cause a mixture of gold incandescent light with 5500 degree flash. This is unprofessioinal and amateurish. It is a technique for under-equipted 'professionals' who want to fake it. Your real world model is 2nd class work for the client.

 

In an outdoor situation, the sync speed is 1/250th as I stated. You would not use 1/125th for a sync speed with flash fill as it would only require you to use more flash power. Unless he owns a Rollei 6008i with PDS lenses, where you could have a 1/1000 sync speed or 1/500th, this person is shooting at 1/250th sync speed outdoors. This requires a f8 and f250th exposure at 125 iso on a bright day. You rate Portra at 100. Now, at f8 what kind of distance can we exposure properly a group? If you had any kind of experience with a flash meter, you would know that f8 of a group takes a lot of power. His amateur flash will produce no more than 100ws. In fact, he may be getting only 25-50ws, all the worse. At 100ws, if you had this experience, you can get no more than an f4.7, more likely a f4.0 of a group of 12-15 people. Maybe that is the bridal party shot, at 100 iso. But we need a f8, we need 2 more stops of power from our 100ws unit, and that translates to 400ws with 100 iso. A "flash fill" is a term more usually applied to pictures taken outside in sun. The amateurs here, like yourself, have applied this term to mean shutter ddragging activities which mix light sources. The mixing of light sources is prohibited in architectural photography for good reasons. The mixing of light sources is prohibited in many kinds of commercial photography. But in weddings, where many weekend auto-mode gadgeteer photographers like yourself reside, you throw out these rules of good picture taking and hand the bride 2nd or 3rd class work. It is the money that is important to you...

 

This questioneer did not say that he was photographing flash fill in a church!

 

I suggest to Mr. Cromwell that he go out and purchase a used Norman 200b or 200c unit so that he can get 200ws immediately for these weddings. A Vivitar 285 unit, at 100ws, would be an improvement for these groups. You will also need a slave eye, such as a Wein unit.

 

Mr. Lambert, before you muddy this net with reckless comments, get some training with Brooks or with an excellent photographer who uses disciplined thinking, performing, and acting.

Timber Borcherding timberborcherding

Mr. Lambert, if you want us to look at your photo, don't post it at that huge size. My monitor isn't 24" wide...<p>Timber, Mr. Cromwell's using Portra 400 rated at either 200 or 320 <i>IN</i> a Church, as noted in his second post.<p> Benjamin, If you decide to use additional lighting, take a strobe capable of delivering F8 at whatever distance and iso you will need, <i>after</i> diffusing (umbrella, softbox or bounce). Slow shutters and bracketing will bite you when photographing a large group. Do not bracket. Do it right... t<p><b>p.s. read Ellis's post over and over until you get all the implications that are <i>unstated</i></b>. That's where your answers lie.

Timber & larry,

 

Some people feel that relying solely on flash photography is cheezy, and other think that using existing light is cheezy. It's just a matter of preference.

 

Personally, I like the look of an amber church in the background of a slighly warm toned couple. I'd shoot in natural light 100% of the time if I could. Both have their strengths and weaknesses as well as challenges and efficiencies. You can't light up every church like a basketball court or expect every venue to have enough available light. There are enough different oppinions among photographers and clients to go in those directions and more. This really isn't the appropriate place to argue about those differences.

 

Now to answer the question...

 

Here are the reasons to use fill flash in a natural light setting. If the lighting is very contrasty the fill will help soften the shadows. If the lighting is directly over head it will help lighten up the eyes. Doesn't work in a group but for singles or couples it will add a catch light. It was cool off a warm light a bit. If you want to make the main subjects pop out a bit and have the background go a little dark you can do that as well using flash at a little higher than ambient. There are a lot of different possiblities when working with flash and ambient light.

 

I do want to respond to some comments Timber...

 

"In an outdoor situation, the sync speed is 1/250th as I stated. You would not use 1/125th for a sync speed with flash fill as it would only require you to use more flash power"

 

Sync Speed is the maximum shutter spead that your camera can operate with flash. Since most cameras use curtain shutters that is the fastest speed that the second shutter isn't started before the first shutter has stopped (I hope I got that right). Leaf shutters don't have that limitation, though must leaf shutters don't seem to go much past 1/500th. Using a slower shutter speed will ont require you to use more flash power. The duration of the flash is only about 1/10,000th of a second in many cases. If you go into a completely dark room and take two exposures one at 30 secs one at 1/250th, your flash still only needs to put out the same amount of light. The only thing I know that reduces the power of the flash based on shutter speed is using a shutter speed faster than the sync speed with a flash capable of high sync. Maybe I'm missing something though... Care to clarify Timber?

OK Lets see now If I can sum up everyone's comments, Drag the shutter, Don't, Flash everyone I can but keep them in the dark while overexposing myself while flashing in the fill of the shade cast directly by the sun only while using ambient light. Oh yeah and Meter the hell out of everything.

 

Look out birde here I come, I have 45 rolls, and I have already cashed your check!!!! AHHHH HAHAHA

well, I might as well jump back in and say that I did professional wedding photography for one hell of a long time, and I dragged the hell out of every shutter I ever used, and my photographs were not gold in color because I, as the professional I was, communicated with my color lab, and made sure that my colors were correct.

 

What is amateurish is the countless number of photographs I have looked at from aspiring wedding photographers where the backgrounds are completely black and lacking in detail due to their very short shutter speeds in connection with their on camera automatic flashes.

 

Moreover, one cannot generalize on a synch speed for outdoor fill flash. there are just too many variables, including film speed, direction of light, amount of light, desired light ratio, etc. As we all know, one controls ambient light by both shutter speed and f stop, and controls flash by either/or f stop and the amount of power/distance from subject of the flash. With so many variables, it is almost impossible to state that there is one proper speed for outdoor work.

 

On the other hand, there is no doubt that when shooting large groups on an altar in a church you are going to be shooting at very slow shutter speeds unless you have an incredible amount of window light or other ambient light. that is becasue you will need at least f8 and sometimes more depth of field when you have a large group. My set up for altar groups consisted of two photogenic powerlights bounced into umbrellas set up to read f8 on the middle of the group, and I often shot at either 1/8 or 1/4 of a second. No gold, no amber, just beautiful detailed shots that look professional.

 

One more thing. It seems that everyone on this photo net seems to think that when you are outdoors and doing fill flash you need to set the flash lower than the ambient light. Not so fast. I have made many beatiful portraits where I have used my off camera flash as the main light and relied on the ambient light as the fill. Usually metered for a 3 to 1 ratio (where the fill hits both the main and the shadow side of the face). It all depends again on what the conditions are that you have to work with.

Tom, in your last paragraph you mention using the shutter to reduce the power of your flash: The way it really works in outdoor fill-flash is that you are faced with controlling two breeds of light: flash and sunlight. You must control the power of each separately while they blend upon the film. You control sunlight using speed and f stop. You control flash using f stop (apeture) and the power switch on the unit. If you change the speed, the flash is unaffected. If you change f stop --the apeture, you change both sunlight power and flash power. This is where it gets interesting. I'll be back...

Timber... correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that opposed to what you said "In an outdoor situation, the sync speed is 1/250th as I stated. You would not use 1/125th for a sync speed with flash fill as it would only require you to use more flash power."?

Let me continue...You are on a golf course, the people are under a shady tree limb. If you have iso 125 film, the correct exposure is 250th at f11. It is a sunny day around noon. The golf corse is perfectly exposed, green grass and the sky is a perfect blue. Everywhere the sun hits, the colors pop out with perfect colors. But where the sun doesn't hit, like under the rocks and under the shady tree, there is blackness. The solution is to add some light to those areas using your flash unit. No problem, yet. Your flash unit will give you the power of the sun in 1/1000th of a second. But the difference between the sun and your flash unit is distance: the sun is 92 million miles away. The flash is ten feet from the people under the tree. In order for the flash unit to match the power of the sun for 1/1000th of a sec., it has to be ten feet from the people in the shade. This is where you start to have problems....

We don't want to disturb our basic exposure of the perfectly exosed golf course: f11 at 250th; but if we use f16 at 125th or f22 at 60th, the golf course will not change its color. The shady areas remain black and the people are black under the black shade. So, we try to illuminate these people using our flash. We want to only put the same power of the sun on these people so that they will be as bright as the green golf course, no brighter or darker! So, how do we do that? What do we control? Since we know that our flash unit will be equal to the sun if we put the flah unit ten feet away from the people WHEN F11 is used on the camera, we could simply set the camera for f11, set the speed for 250th, then put the flash unit ten feet away from the people, and take the picture! The golf course and the people will look like they belong together. The shade wilwill be become lit with the power of the flash unit. You have "filled-in" the shade with light, with flash, hence the term "fill-flash."

Let's take a hypothical shot here and see what you have.

 

Church with no Windows, Shooting tmax 400 and portra 400, Group shot is being set up say a dozen people including the bride and groom. What would you do in the following situations. (all readings are ambiant, no flash added . . . yet?!?)

 

 

1)Meter reads 1/15th @ f8

 

 

2)Meter reads 1/15th @ F2.8

 

 

3)Meter reads 1/60th @ f8

 

4)What is your overall opinion for Rating these 2 films??

Now here is the bad news: If you move your flash unit back to 20 feet from the people, even 12 feet from these people, you will illuminate them less than before than when you were at 10 feet. This is the "geometric rule" for light fall-off. So, if you need to be 30 feet away from these people because there is a large group of them, and you want to include everyone, you have to increase the power of your flash unit by turning up the juice. So what if you're already up to yor limit? You're stuck. Go to jail, don't collect $200.

Well, maybe there is one thing you could do...you could open your apeture to an f5.6, this will allow more light from the flash onto the film during tht 1/1000th of a second. But if you do this, you need to change the speed of your camera to 1/1000 to counter balance the larger hole, the bigger fstop. Looks good, the golf course will be perfectly exposed at 1/1000th at f5.6, and the people will be lit by the flash unit (at f5.6 setting in the lens.) Perfect? What's the problem here?

the "geometric rule" is called the inverse square law, which states that as you change the distance between a light and the subject, the intensity of the light will change in propotion to the inverse square of the change of distance. (I think I said that correctly)

 

As an example. if you have a light that is 10 feet from a person, and the light reads f8 and you now double that distance so that the light is 20 feet from the person, the distance has doubled, and the square of the inverse of 2 is 1/2 times 1/2 or 1/4. so the light will now be only 1/4 as bright, or 2 stops less, which would be f5.6.

 

it works the other way as well. if you have a reading of f 8 at 10 feet and you now move the light to five feet, you have halved the distance. the inverse of 1/2 is 2 and 2 squared is 4. the light is 4 times more powerful, or 2 stops, and so should read f16.

 

remember, as you move the light away the cone angle becomes more broad and you will reach a wider plane. you just need to adjust the power of your unit to compensate for the change in distance. By the same token, as you move closer, the cone angle becomes more narrow. you need to decrease the power to compensate for a change.

 

Kevin

Re. Timber vs. Tom on outdoor fill flash.

 

Pains me to say it, but Timber is right. When mixing flash with ambient on

bright sunny days you will always use the fastest sync speed possible, as this will give

you a wider aperture (for the ambient) and hence reduce the demands on your

flashgun.

 

Re. Benjamin's hypothetical church with no windows:

 

At f8 on 400ASA film you will likely get a reading of about 1/4 of a second. Even with

a tripod, this is too slow a shutter speed for a group shot, as one of the group is

bound to move during the exposure. If I was in your position, I'd simply photograph

the group outside the church, but I understand that the convention in the States is to

do these group shots at the altar. Ideally you would light this group with a flashhead

on a stand, fired into a brolly. But you are a beginner and this is over-ambitious. So

use your camera mounted-flash. Dragging the shutter is a good idea, but you don't

want to overdo it as you will get ghosting.

 

So set your flash and lens aperture at f8. And then set the shutter to 2 stops under

your meter reading - so if you are metering f8 at 1/4th, set your shutter to 1/15th.

 

You seem quite clueless, so I'd strongly recommend that you get down to that church

with a friend and shoot a test before the wedding.

"Re. Timber vs. Tom on outdoor fill flash."

 

No 'vs.' here. Just wanted clarification on his comment which didn't make sense with out the subsequent responses. He was thinking outdoor, I was thinking a dimly lit church. In a dimly lit church, if you are not properly exposing at 1/250th at f/5.6 and you are at 1/125 at f/5.6 then you're not going to be using more flash for a slower aperture.

 

I thought I'd relate my answers to the question being asked rather than to lighting a group of people under a tree at a golf course. Maybe that's why people have so many comments regarding Timber hehe :)

Elliot, as you can see many people have different ways to do things and they don't always agree. Do they get the job done? Porbably, photography is a an art, a style. Because I have not shot a million weddings I am seeking to develop my own style of getting the job done. I ask questions to discover different ways to deal with a situation. While I may not carry the Golden Camera like YOU, it seems that when ever it comes to being helpful and encouraging to someone who is tring to presue an art that you self-proclaim to have been so seccussful you are clueless.

 

I asked some pretty basic questions in order to have extra ammo in my bag, yet I got one person that was helpful, there are some that seem to be at war, and then one that insults me.

 

Are these forum not for learning? Just because I ask elementary questions and I am trying to become more skilled does that make me clueless??