Suggestions for Shooting Indoor Group Photo

[hayward]

I've been asked to shoot a group photo of a kids gymnastics team -

about 40 kids age 8 to 16 plus some adult coaches. They want to do

it in their gym. With one kid or a group of kids, I could do it with

my SB-800, but that won't be enbought to light all of them in

relatively poor light. At least I don't think it will. Would you all

suggest another SB-800 linked to the first? Would that be enough?

Also, how wide do you think I need to be to get them all in? I'm

using a D70 and just sold my 20mm 2.8. I have good zoom that reaches

28mm, but I suspect a 17-35 may be required or even something like

the 12-24. If I do it, I'll obviously do some testing before the

shoot, but your input may give me a leg up.

[lee hamiel]

John:

 

I used to coach hockey & take team photos - At the time I used a Nikon F3 w/50 1.4 & 400 speed film & all went very well - this was with the ambient mercury vapor rink/gym type lighting.

 

What body are you going to be using?

 

Now - if you're using your SB-800 I feel you will be okay as it has a pretty high guide number & hence good output.

 

Also - if you're looking for a good excuse to get a 17-35 :) then I will strongly suggest getting one as it truly is a great lens & will serve you well. Maybe throw in another SB-800 at the same time while you're on a roll!

 

Good Luck

[erickpro]

If you have the cash, get the 12-24 and another 800.

 

If you don't have the cash just make sure you can get far back from the group to get everybody in the frame with your 28mm ( I suggest you scout the place before you shoot) and yes, get another flash for even lighting.

[lex_jenkins]

The D70 and a single SB-800 will be adequate - just adequate - for this job.

 

Keep in mind that to get the greatest dispersion for a wide angle lens or zoom setting you'll need to use the pull-out, flip-down lens or the pop-on diffusion dome. The lens will give you a bit more light, the diffusion dome a bit softer light.

 

Don't spread the group out too widely or arrange them too deeply. The usual team pose - shorter kids kneeling in front, taller kids standing in the middle, tallest at the rear, coaches to the sides - would work fine.

 

The main challenges will be to get a decent balance of flash and ambient lighting so your subjects don't look like ghosts hovering in the dark; and to white balance as accurately as possible for the conditions. It's tricky because gym lights are usually sodium vapor, mercury vapor or something like that. The color cast will be ghastly on skin tones. The best you can hope for with a single flash is to expose and white balance for best skin tones. During post processing you can tweak the surroundings enough to minimize the greenish or other cast.

 

A slowish shutter speed will take care of the first problem - 1/15 to 1/30 second at ISO 400-800 should work in most gyms.

 

To help with white balancing take a neutral gray card and follow the usual procedure recommended for your camera.

 

I'll attach a photo from a recent wedding. Nikon D2H, single SB-800. ISO 640, 1/30 @ f/5.3, 24-120 VR at 24mm. White balance was set to Auto (+2, I think) because I'd given up on trying to WB this church accurately. I'd visited the church twice before to check the white balance and exposure but the lighting was changed every night so it was hopeless.

 

The skin tones are reasonably accurate, the whites are reasonably white, but you can see the carpet varies from gray in the foreground to greenish-brown in the background, as do the walls. Only additional flash units set up overhead to overpower the sodium vapor gym lights would have prevented this problem. I'd intended to try this but it wasn't practical - the overhead beams were at least 20 feet above the floor.<div></div>

[vivek iyer]

Looking at the shadows, it seems to me that you used the SB-800 as a fill flash, Lex. Hardly a poor ambient light situation?

[cappoldt]

If you have a large, light (or hopefully white) wall in the gym, try taking a second SB-800 and shooting them both into the wall at about 15 ft. apart, turning the wall into a large diffused light source. Put the group as close to the wall as you can, keeping them all in-frame.

[rick_beets]

I wish I had a quick easy answer for this but I don't. I do this all of the time, large groups

indoors and out, it is always a bit of a challenge. First, the lens. I prefer not to shoot

wider than I have to, wide lenses can tend to make the closer subjects look larger than the

ones in the rear, in fact, if I have lots of room, I will use a standard or slight telephoto. It

is also helpful to shoot higher so that your attention is drawn more to the faces than the

body. If you are using bleachers or steps or something, try to match the angle of the steps

with the vertical tilt of the tripod, then the plane of focus will help keep the focus

consistant. Posing is a balancing act, I don't want to go too deep, 4 or more rows, if I don't

have to, depth of field is going to be a factor in poorly lit gyms, but you don't want to go

too wide either or the players will be smaller in the overall composition. I have never used

on camera flash for this, always studio strobes, even outdoors, ussually with an umbrella

or more likely a wide reflector (more efficiant, more light). As has been said already, try to

use existing light as your key or main source and try to fill with flash, in this situation, a

2nd SB800 might do it for fill. Good luck! BTW: In some gyms, I will use my studio

strobes alone because the gym isn't pretty or the background or back wall is too busy. In

this case, I move the group as far away from the clutter as possible and the strobes only

light the team, this lights the floor nicely and the background is dark or hopefully black.

Of course, then you might try to backlight the back row so the dark haired players heads

are still defined.

[lex_jenkins]

Vivek, the reason I pointed out the variance in color on the carpet from the foreground toward the dais is to illustrate the range of the single on-camera flash and its limitations in a situation like this. If the flash had been set to full output the people in the foreground would have been washed out. Tried it on other shots - didn't work. That's why I'd initially hoped to use multiple flash units overhead from front to back. Unfortunately this turned out to be impractical.

 

John will have more control over setting up this team for photos. He can minimize the foreground-to-background distance and avoid problems with excessive color shifts. However a single on-camera flash will still be limited because it will be necessary to either incorporate ambient lighting and deal with the white balance problems, or use flash as the primary light source and deliver a photo that looks like it was taken with a snapshot camera by one of the kid's moms.

[vivek iyer]

Thanks for the explanation, Lex. Makes sense now.