Outdoor winter sun, 4 people, 3'6x6'6 reflector/diffuser - enough?

[james_osborne]

Am going to be shooting a family outdoors in the winter sun (unless it

is raining!!)

 

I intend to use my 3'6x6'6 reflector/diffuser, however I am concerned

it may not be big enough to cover 4 people 10' away.

 

Obviously a couple of 500w strobes would be good, but I haven't been

able to rent a power pack.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Jim

[brooks short]

It won't be large enough to cover 4 people as a scrim. You could use it as a reflector. Why don't you set the thing up and see for yourself?

[jmf]

bad idea unless the grouping is very close, and you're sticking to head and shoulders and the reflector is closer

 

Metallic sides: 10' is too far away. The light will be very specular, like the sun bouncing off water, plus they will squint from the reflection.

 

White: see above with less squint. might work much closer as in 2-3 ft. from their faces

 

Diffusion: would need to be fairly close with a tight shot.

 

You don't need big power packs. Stay away from midday. Let the Sun highlight their heads and shoulders (assuming no bald shiny types), but faces are in open shadow. Just use an on camera flash set to whatever is the normal setting for the distance with f/stop and shutter speed set correctly for ambient. Remember whatever your max sync speed is and don't go higher. If you're having trouble, shoot in open shade. Another tack is to use the sun as a key light (about 45deg) off of the lens axis, and let your on camera flash be set to about 1 stop less than normal so that it acts as fill. You can get a bit more squinting this way

 

 

 

I've successfully done this with a vivitar 285, so you don't need a 4800J pack to pull this off.

[james_osborne]

Thanks.

 

I was going to fallback on my Speedlight as a fill flash... however I was/am concerned about covering 4 people, I have had no problems with portraits with fill flash.

 

Jim