Wedding reception in gym-type lighting

I've been lurking the forums lately because I was 'volunteered' to do wedding

photos for a friend (my first wedding).

 

I've been doing as much research as possible and just visited the wedding

location yesterday. It's in a really old church, the reception hall is about

the size of a basketball court. It's completely enclosed with no natural

lighting. Existing lights look like the inside of a gym (or maybe costco?). High

(30') dark wood ceilings. Camera reading was 1/60s @ 400iso using f2.8.

 

Can anyone point me in the right direction as to what film, lighting, or

equipment combinations to use for more natural skin tones? Right now all I have

is a metz 45 cl-4 potato masher. Wedding is about a month away, so there's still

some time to prepare. I shot some pictures with Portra 400nc but won't see them

until the end of the week.

 

Thanks.

I would suggest running some test shots at different shutter-speeds (any old film should do). The output of some fluorescent and arc lights varies at 60Hz or 120Hz, and you can get some shading across the frame at shutter-speeds 1/60 and faster. Shoot a number of test frames (10 at least?) because the effect is variable, depending on the exact timing between the shutter and the AC cycle.

 

Can you borrow a color-temperature meter? You might be able to get much the same information from some digital RAW shots; play with the white-balance in photoshop (or the like), and use that information to choose a filter for your film shooting.

 

Cheers,

 

Geoff S.

I would override the fluorescent or arc lights by using the flash as primary source of illumination and underexposing the background (by at least 2 stops--dragging the shutter). Film seems to deal with mixed lighting easier than digital, so I wouldn't bother with gelling. For natural skin tone, just be sure your subjects are well lit by the flash. You can try a large bounce card with the Metz--at least the light will be a little softer than direct, but in a situation where you don't have much in the way of bouncing surfaces, it might not make enough of a difference to be worth it. Portra 400NC is a great choice for natural skin tones.

Also, if underexposing the ambient, you shouldn't have to worry about the shading referred to above, since your subjects should be lit primarily by flash. I would also use a smaller aperture than f2.8 during the reception and for candids (for portraits and when you have the time to focus carefully, etc., OK) for a little margin of error on DOF.

David, are you the same Rideout Photography that has a Photodex show on ProShow's site?

Oops, I stand corrected, that's Mark Ridout.. Sorry.

I recently shot a wedding where the reception was held in a gymnasium type building. One big room, ceilings about 25' high, ugly ugly available light and virtually no decorations. It was tough. If I had to do it over again, I would set power packs in one or two corners of the room and bounce the heads into the ceiling/wall to provide "ambient" light (basically creating two giant umbrellas). On camera I'd have a bracket with TTL flash and a pocket wizard to trip the packs. Play around with the ratios to get things looking good and forget about the ugly natural light altogether.

Michael, since this is Michael's first wedding, I wouldn't recommend he run out, rent a couple of power pack lights and try to use multiple lighting his first time out. Anyway, the ceilings are dark wood, so bouncing off the ceiling is out, although walls might be do-able if they are light colored. I personally would use my two off camera flashes direct in addition to my on-camera--not bounced, but I've done this many times before.

Oops...I meant David's first wedding.

Listen to Nadine.

I like Nadine's advice too and that is basically what I did the first time. The problems I encountered with that were that, my shadows had a different color cast than mid-tones/highlights and then I always have a hard time accepting on camera flash (even with a bracket) as a main light source. I probably should have kept the ambient darker than I did.

 

Another idea I've been toying with is to carry around a small stand with an umbrella or soft-box, TTL via hot-shoe cord and just keeping it at arms length about a foot over head. Basically it would achieve the same effect as a giant flash bracket + diffusion. Probably I'd want an on camera flash to fill in the shadows and even the light out (-1/1.5). Again, the idea is to not rely on ambient at all.

Michael--what was the color cast in the shadows? Greenish? or yellowish? If yes, then maybe not enough cutting out of the ambient light? It might be less of a problem since David is shooting film, which seems to handle mixed lighting better... If you don't rely on the ambient some, you'll get pitch black backgrounds, which doesn't look very good. Anyway, I figure David will have enough to worry about at a first wedding and should concentrate on the content of the images while making sure they are well focused and exposed (by flash). And the Metz 45, because it has a slightly larger reflector, is slightly softer than most shoemount flashes--ever so slightly.

My problem is the lighting that has the green hint in gyms. If you use the ambient light, things will have a green hint unless you do a manual white balance.