Need tips for inside warehouse shooting

<p>My friend owns a warehouse with similiar layout and setup like Costco. He asks me to take wide angle picture of his 10000 sq ft. warehouse with limited lighting on ceiling, for his new web site. Since the ceiling is extremely high, I have no way to use bounce flash light. Do I only have the option to put my D300 on tripod with slow shutter ? My friend wants to add crew members working inside the warehouse, like lifting cargo with forklift... staff checking items... etc. I'm worry any movement in slow shutter will result in blurry image. Any less expensive way to get the job done ? <br>

Thanks.</p>

<p>Use long exposure to illuminate warehouse interior correctly, use flash fill on people close to camera with open background to prevent strong shadows, ask staff to stay reasonably still for duration of overall exposure.</p>

<p>Experiment with some limited controlled staff/machinery movement as this can give a lovely blur that symbolizes movement and work and can make the place look alive. Use second shutter sync for this as it makes the 'blur' from the subject go behind the sharp flash-exposed subject.</p>

<p>There's no easy way here, I'm afraid. Here's how I would do it. I believe many "commercial industrial" photos are done that way.<br>

1. Shoot a correctly lit image with the required depth of field. Small aperture, long exposure. Bracket if necessary.<br>

Light temperatures are the trickiest part. You can't just go around and flash your strobe, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013J5XZE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=proonphoto-forum-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=B0013J5XZE">some warming gels </a>usually are what's needed. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002EMY9Y/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=proonphoto-forum-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=B0002EMY9Y">Nikon's SB-600</a> can be controlled with the pop-up flash and that's handy. But if the space is huge, I usually just walk around and pop the flash multiple times around the room.<br>

Let the camera stay put on the tripod when you're done with the overall shot.<br>

2. Shoot the workers/people. Put the external flash so that it lights and freezes the people. You might turn your ISO up a few notches, so that you have a 1/8 - 1/2 sec exposure that leaves a nice trailing motion. And oh, be sure to use 2nd curtain sync on your camera. So again, expose correctly, freeze the people with flash this time. Worry only about the area the people are in<br>

If the workers are in different places you can obviously do this a few times over.<br>

3. That's it. Photoshop time. Now you convert your raw files so that the exposure is the same on all of them. Next stack the images in Photoshop and mask away the empty areas on the people shots.<br>

Not too easy, but once you get the understanding of it, you should get a worthy result. Hope this helps.</p>

<p>Since the photos are for web use, which doesn't require much in terms of resolution, you can set the camera to maximum ISO and still get results that are excellent for the purpose. Use all the available light you can get, and you can experiment with some strategically placed strobes if you have the means to trigger them remotely. I am sure you'll get some interesting results.</p>

<p>I'd echo Jaan's third point ... I hope you are reasonably competant with your editing programme since you don't even need RAW if you are not familiar with it, and can do it all with jpg files just as easilly. But I'd guess that you need an assistant to operate the camera for subsequent shots while you position the flash to light the people .... remembering that for setting your camera's aperture in manual it is the flash-to-subject distance that determines this irrespective of where the camera is. It is called 'Painting with light" and can be a fun practice. But you have to visualise the effect your are creating as opposed to recording a scene.<br>

The two of you working well could 'create' the entire warehouse with multiple flashes remembering that if the flash is not powerful enough with one flash you can double its power by flashing twice at full power or maybe more without having the shutter open too long and causing noise.</p>