Wedding Reception lighting room with dark ceiling

[julie_sweeney]

<p>Hello:<br>

I shot a wedding where the reception hall had all brown ceilings. Usually I bounce my 580 EXII on my Canon 5D. I try not to bump the ISO up past 1600. <br>

Can anyone share any other ways to light a dark reception hall that does not have white ceilings. I'm looking for creative ways to use my off camera flashes or any other suggestions.<br>

Cheers, <br>

Julie</p>

[francie_baltazar]

<p>Off camera flash is the best way to do this and get some dramtic looks. You can find several books on this topic on amazon as well as searching this formum for the topic as well. </p>

[lornesunley]

<p>Big clamps holding the flashes up at the ceiling pointing downwards through shoot through umbrellas will do the trick.</p>

[eduardo_suastegui]

<p>That's a tough situation, but a good reason for you to explore alternatives to ceiling bounces, which are not ideal (shadows under eyes, etc.).</p>

<ol>

<li>Side bounce from walls is better, but may also not be practical in the central areas of the room. </li>

<li>Having someone hold a reflector will also not be ideal, especially if the room is crowded. </li>

<li>You could get a flash bracket, but I don't personally like it because it isn't much better than straight on-camera flash.</li>

<li>I've also tried a flash bender with minor success: it increases the size of the light source, but on-camera flash is on-camera flash.</li>

</ol>

<p>As someone suggested, off-camera flash is the alternative. The question, then is how do you go about it. Some options include:</p>

<ol>

<li>"Light on a stick" - this involves an assistant following you around with a flash on a monopod or similar pole (the stick), either tethered to or wirelessly controlled from your camera.</li>

<li>Setting up remote/slave units in strategic places throughout the room. For instance, a couple of slaves on stands hiding behind the speakers around the dance floor is a good approach. These become virtual lightbulbs; just be careful of your placement with respect to them, and you may need to combine their contribution with on-camera flash.</li>

</ol>

<p>I'm sure others will have additional suggestions, but that's what I have in my bag of flash tricks.</p>

[picturesque]

<p>1. Wall bounce, if the walls are white and not hugely distant.</p>

<p>2. White card bounce with shutter drag.</p>

<p>3. Off camera flashes, with or without item 2 above.</p>

<p>Example below is item 3, with on camera white card bounce. Also, you can use the off camera flash to good effect at times.</p>

<p>Here's an old thread. Look at the links I posted in the thread, too.</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/wedding-photography-forum/00SnZ1</p><div></div>

[mariosforsos]

<p>Personally I always keep a Gary Fong Lightsphere around just for these cases. While some of the light from the LS is supposed to be bounced off the ceiling, by caping it you can ensure that MOST (if though not all) the light is directed downwards and through the diffusion "mechanism", thereby giving you nice, smooth and difused light.</p>

[Marcus Ian]

<p>I wouldn't rely on a wireless off-camera setup if you haven't used that setup before. It's not that it can't make marvelous pictures, but without practice, and some experience geared toward setup location, and settings, you'll be hard pressed to get useable results.</p>

<p>I would recommend playing w/ an off camera setup, but relying on on-camera w/ either a diffuser (I personally use a lightsphere ) or a bounce card, until you are comfortable w/ your setup. <br>

OTOH, you'd be surprised at the creative effects you can come up w/ in a pinch... the occasional guest wearing a white shirt :-) (I used myself as a bounce card once...) or even a cake. Play w/ it! </p>

[rippo]

<p>One problem I've run into with VERY DARK venues (where they basically turn all the lights off for the first dance etc) is that throwing up a few lights in the corners creates some very harsh light. Umbrellas from more than about 10 feet away do nothing to soften the light. And if you shoot from the wrong angle, you can get some ugly 'hatchet light' looks (so you have to shoot with one light basically over your shoulder at all times). If the ambient is enough to at least give you a base for fill, then then lighting the room this way will work well. But not if there's no fill anywhere.<br>

Another approach is to use on-camera flash in TTL mode, coupled with manually triggered flashes *lighting the walls*. On-camera flash can look ok if you avoid the dark tunnel effect of flash fall-off. So if you light your subject, and the background is lit also, the eye doesn't worry about the things in between. It's basically like shooting in a studio, where you light your background and your subject separately. And you can still bounce off walls and other things if convenient, since your main flash is TTL.<br>

But you have to test this a lot before using it in practice…some cameras won't sync and do TTL at the same time, or the TTL gets confused when manual strobes are attached as well.</p>

[frank_skomial]

<p><em>" the TTL gets confused when manual strobes are attached as well." </em> - the old film TTL or with Thyristor automation, would get confused, since the exposure determination happens during exposure time when the shutter is open.</p>

<p>Use newer flash systems that depend on pre-flash time light determination (e.g. iTTL, ETTL-II, etc..).</p>

<p>With newest digital cameras and compatible flashes, pre-flash test based flash exposure is determined when the shutter is closed, and does not change during exposure time.</p>

<p>Additional manual flashes could possibly easily overexpose the picture exposure determined for the iTTL flash alone, so direct the manual flashed to do "lighting the walls" to provide better flash ambient lighting.</p>

<p>The iTTL or ETTL_II light determination can get confused during preflash time, if any other flashes are opticaally trigerred at that time. However, flashing strong manual flashes trigerred during exposure time, will not confuse pre-flash based flashes.</p>

<p>If you use iTTL automation, your subject is always correctly exposed by the iTTL flash, and make sure the strong manual flashes do not overexpose the subject too much. Some experimantation on placing manual flashe in the room perhaps will be needed, to enhance and operate to advantage of the flash(es) that are used in automatic mode (e.g. CLS).</p>

[picturesque]

<p>When shooting with unmodified off camera flashes, you do need to be aware of where they are when shooting. If, for instance, you have them opposite each other, you try to stay perpendicular to the axis, but of course--other angles are OK too, including catching one of the flashes in the frame. You can have the off camera flashes be your main light, or you can have them be your accent lights, for subject separation, in which case, they shouldn't be more powerful than your on camera flash. Consequently, the harshness should not be that prominent.</p>

<p>Realizing the fact that distance of light to subject creates a wider range of fall off, you might not want to use unmodified off camera flashes in small rooms. Also, I've often pointed unmodified lights straight at the upper parts of opposite walls, sometimes with gobos in place, and used the feathered part of the light as the accent light. This allows the light to plump up the ambient light by very indirect reflectance off surfaces, no matter what the value. I've sometimes pointed the lights backward, directly at walls too.</p>

<p>Frank--ETTL (evaluative) will get confused when there is an off camera flash in a frame. It is one of the quirks that drives me crazy. You get massive underexposure. Don't know why it happens, since based on your explanation, it shouldn't see the off camera flash. But I know it happens.</p>

[pete_s.]

<p>Multiple off camera flash and strobes require more setup and more gear to carry as well as consideration when shooting.</p>

<p>I wonder if the easiest solution is not just to use large aperture primes and crank up the cameras iso. And then bounce off the dark ceiling as needed.</p>

<p>With a large aperture and high iso you can even bounce off a black ceiling. The difference between a black surface and a white surface is little more than three stops of reflectivity. So you need to increase the iso, decrease the aperture and increase the flash power a total of three stops when bouncing off black compared to white.</p>

<p>Flash heads need to be zoomed in manually and any modifiers removed for efficient bouncing. You can actually gain up to three stops just by doing that.</p>

<p> </p>

[Marcus Ian]

<p>Another downside to bouncing off a black ceiling (IME) is that your light will pick up the undertone (usually a blue or brown) of the paint, and alter your effective WB. Shoot RAW. Unpredictable would be the best way to describe your initial results. Personally, I'd find something white...anything! to bounce off before that ceiling.</p>

[julie_sweeney]

<p>Thank you so much for all the responses. <br>

I'm shooting a wedding next month with more brown ceilings (why brown). I've been thinking of purchasing a Q flash trio, but the cost is pretty steep. I'm going to try with two 580 EX II positioned near the DJ's Speakers if they are along the dance floor. <br>

I would love to try the Q flash but it's so expensive. I'm also considering video light for formals. I've been studying some of Jerry Ghionis work and love his style. His lighting is amazing. <br>

<br />Cheers and thank you again</p>

[ianivey]

<p>At a wedding in November, the Reception room had very dark walls.</p>

<p>The ambient lighting was set so low as to make ambient-only simply impossible. Although the ceiling was a lighter color, the ceiling was low, and the room was divided in a way that made bouncing off the ceiling impractical. </p>

<p>Here's a simplified diagram of the room:</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

[ianivey]

<p>The odd shape of the room meant I could not put a speedlight in each corner, aimed mostly up and a bit into the room, bouncing. At both protrusion points, the ceiling also descended more than a foot, which would block ceiling bounce from the far sides.</p>

<p>So I decided to go with direct flash, and set three strobes up on stands, aiming them into the room like this:</p><div></div>

[ianivey]

<p>Strobes A and B (left and right) were set to 1/4 power (though, by the end of the evening, I had bumped them to almost 1/2 power).</p>

<p>After some trial and error, I aimed them up a bit to feather them off the people immediately below them -- the room was so wide that the people at the tables near the flash were blown out too much when I was near them. First lesson: when setting up cross-lighting in a wide room, feather light off the folks nearest the flash, because the light there is so intense. Pay attention to how close you are to any one of your strobes, because you'll need to adjust aperture or ISO when you're very close to them.</p>

<p>But I still wanted to throw direct light into the room, so although I sort of lobbed light across the room by aiming up a bit to feather off the folks closest to the strobe, I still had them aimed mostly into the room.</p>

<p>Here's a shot that gives you an idea of how dark the walls were, and how low the ambient was (which is its primary value as a photo -- it's otherwise not terribly interesting): </p>

<p> </p><div></div>

[rippo]

<p>Ugh, dark AND shiny walls. The worst. Looks like you made the right choice with direct light. Did you consider using on-camera flash as well as the wall strobes, so you could keep people's faces from falling into shadow?<br>

I did something similar recently, didn't use on-camera flash, and regretted it later. Too much hatchet light, shadowed faces etc. Lots of drama, but I'm sure the client would have preferred to see facial expressions (fortunately I was shooting with two cameras, one with on-camera flash only, plus a second shooter, so it worked out ok).</p>

[ianivey]

<p>Further complicating matters, the walls, though very dark cherry, also produced major specular reflections. And to top everything off, the left wall featured a large mirror behind the bar (blue bar in the room diagram.</p>

<p>I used strobe C, toward the middle of the room, bottom of the diagram, for "fill." I believe I set it to 1/16, but it might have been 1/8 -- I changed ratios at least three times throughout the evening. </p>

<p>I put "fill" in quotes, because, as I'm moving all over the room, and as people are facing different directions all the time, any one of these lights can be a fill, key, or rim light. Strobe C often worked as fill for the middle area where some events occurred; it also worked as sort of a spotlight for the bride and groom, who sat together at the small table in the middle, near the back wall. It was the key light for some of the dancing (especially when I was shooting from the top middle-left of the diagram).</p>

<p>Strobe C as rim (with some of its reflection off the back wall as fill):</p><div></div>

[ianivey]

<p>Here's Strobe C as key, to camera left and behind the camera:</p><div></div>

[ianivey]

<p>Nadine mentioned another lesson: be sure you know which lights are going to fire into your lens. When you catch a strobe in the frame or close to the edge of the frame, you'll get flare. Sometimes this looks nice or artsy:</p><div></div>

[ianivey]

<p>....but often, lens flare from shooting into the strobe will simply dominate the image. In this shot, the strobe is just out of the frame on the right. (After seeing this on the LCD, I moved to camera right to continue shooting the bridal party entering, with much better results.) </p><div></div>

[ianivey]

<p>Although I don't want to do it for every shot, the most dramatic shots are often those in which the subjects occlude a strobe (i.e., the subject is directly between the camera and the strobe, so the strobe is a strong rim-light). In this shot, the rim light of Strobe A sets the couple apart from the cluttered background, which helps make this image work. By "set them apart," I mean that the nearly white line around his entire head, and around most of hers, provides a strong outline of their figures, which would otherwise have been so close in color and tone to the wall that they would have blended in too much.</p>

<p>If I didn't have the strobe back there to help separate them, the expression on his face and her hand around his neck still would have been nice, but I don't think the shot would have worked well because the background would have been too similar.</p><div></div>

[ianivey]

<p>Matt asked a good question: did I consider using on-camera flash for fill?</p>

<p>Yes, I thought about it, and I do use on-camera flash for fill when it is necessary. I chose not to use any on-camera flash in this situation because I had three lights (plus ambient, however dim that may have been). So from most positions in the room, I had a key (occasionally, as in that last image of the couple dancing, the key was ceiling bounce from Strobe C), a fill, and a rim.</p>

<p>I dislike the look of on-camera fill. Sometimes it is vital (because there's no time or no appropriate place to set up an off-camera fill). When shooting processionals/recessionals, it tends to improve results significantly. In fact, had I used it for that purpose during the ceremony shots from this very wedding, I would have usefully increased the number of keepers of people walking down the aisle.</p>

<p>But here, I had mostly what I wanted. The shots from this reception are a long way from perfect. In fact, I had to use digital fill in Lightroom for fully one third of the receptions shots, significantly increasing my processing time. That's not desirable. But it is one tool among many, and I like the results of doing it that way more than the way they would have looked with on-camera fill. I'm not saying you should do it that way; only that I chose to.</p>

<p>These strobes were all firing on CyberSync radio remotes, meaning I had them set to one setting, and I shot in Manual mode the entire evening. One benefit of doing it this way is usually that I'm pretty sure about my exposure. In this room, because Strobes A and B were so far apart, the exposure was not as consistent, and I had to pay attention to how close I was to any strobe. I'd shoot, chimp, adjust, delete, and reshoot. After about 45 minutes, I knew how much to adjust based on where I was shooting from, and I'd also found the sweet spots. From there, it was simple.</p>

<p>Feel free to page through the complete set of reception shots to see how it went. You'll see some problems (occasional blown-out highlights, such as the groom's camera-right side and part of the bride's dress in their entering-the-room picture, above), and some other benefits I didn't mention. Here's the full set: <a href="http://www.ianivey.com/gallery/Wedding-Reception-Photos-Anne-and-Jeff-wedding-in-Arlington-Virginia/G0000TC01L2.tws8">Arlington Wedding Photography: Anne and Jeff, wedding reception photos -- Ian Ivey Photography</a>.</p>

<p><strong>If you see one in that gallery that you want to ask a question about, or critique, fire away. Suggest approaches or angles that you think would have produced better results.</strong></p>

<p>The dark walls and odd room-shape seemed to me to require cross-lighting using direct strobe to get good results. I didn't think simple on-camera bounce (which might have been okay for some shots, given the mostly light colored ceiling) would have worked for the entire event; the walls just sucked way too much light, and the uneven ceiling would have prevented much of the bounce from lighting background well.</p>

<p>Ultimately, if you understand how to make radio triggers work with your strobes, and you understand Manual control of your camera, you can probably get good results from similar setups. This approach definitely sets your images far, far apart from anything attendees (including uncle Bob) are getting. I love the wow-factor of cross-lighting receptions.</p>

[pete_s.]

<p>Ian, that's a very nice description of what you did and what it looked like!</p>

<p>I would argue about the level of ambient light though. The first image you posted was exposed more than 4 stops under normal indoor lighting levels at night. I think it would have looked OK as an ambient light shot if you had exposed it as such. Instead of ISO800, f/6.3, 1/125s you could have done ISO1600, f/2.8, 1/60s or similar.</p>

<p>So I think ambient only would have been a possibility for those that like the ambient look, possibly with a touch of bounce. I also see you have a Nikon D3. Lots of low light potential there :-)</p>

<p>Personally I do like the flash-y look though!</p>

<p> </p>

[ianivey]

<p>Perhaps you're right, Pete -- I am often happy with the results of shooting at 3200 ISO with the D3, so maybe I could have done ambient in this room. I like to keep the shutter at 1/125 at a minimum during receptions because most subjects are moving, but it could have worked at 3200, 2.8, 1/125. And although I do shoot at f/2.8 often enough, I've lost too many otherwise-excellent dancing pictures to focus problems to want to stay there the whole night. </p>

<p>So, yeah, I probably didn't give ambient a chance. :D</p>