It's All About the Light . . .

I was asked to shoot an event this past weekend at a local restaurant - a sweet 16 party which included 110 guests. My thoughts directly went to what gear I would use and how I would do the lighting.

Available light shooting was out of the question - I was informed that the restaurant's dining room lighting level would be held low. I would have to use a fast zoom lens in any case, because a slower lens would have difficulty acquiring focus in such low light. I decided on an 18-50 F2.8 zoom for my D300, which gave me the flexibility of very wide to moderate telephoto, and would still be sharp at F2.8. But it would still not be fast enough to shoot available light, unless I used an ISO of 6400 or higher. The D300 image begins to look pretty crappy at ISOs higher than 800, so speedlight(s) would be the only logical choice.

Among the choices for lighting were on camera flash, which could be bounced for more even lighting, but I had hoped that I could do something a little different. I don't care for camera-positioned lighting because no matter what portable modifier you use, the quality of the light is flat and unappealing, with no contour-shaping shadows, except for that shadow that ends up under the chin and nose when you use those tall swiveling flash brackets that all the paparazzi use.  Another undesirable characteristic is flash shine - an area of perspiration-moistened or oily shiny skin that reflects more light, usually resulting in unflatteringly overexposed skin areas. With the expectation of shooting 100s of pictures there was no way I would spend days in Photoshop correcting shine.

I decided that the room was small enough to light the room with flash. It was time to mobilize the over half-dozen second-hand speedlights that I have collected over the years. All of them are made by Sunpak - 433D, 444D, 360D, and the venerable and highly sought after Auto 383. Each has a guide number of 120 making them as powerful as the best offered by Nikon or Canon these days. But more important - adjustable light output levels. I figured that with enough lights strategically placed I could illuminate the entire party room and keep the output levels low enough to be able to shoot the entire 4 hour event, take 400 images and not have to change the batteries.

I visited the restaurant the night before the event to check out possible locations for lighting. There were wall-mounted sconces that were large enough to conceal my lights, but they were too far from the ceilings. This distance is important since the light to subject is significantly greater when the light has the longer path to travel from the flash head to the ceiling then to the subjects. Also, there was a greater chance of getting the flash in the shot, which can work for dramatic effect if used judiciously, but definitely not ok for every other shot.This alternative was not going to work for me.

I decided to use super clamps to attach the speedlights and flash triggers to the chandeliers. With a little trial and error I was able to point the lights to cover the room with 7 speedlights, which left me one for the camera for low power fill. The ceiling-bounced flash was set to 1./4 power. This provided relatively short recycle times and low power consumption.

These were triggered with my favorite radio triggers, the Yongnuo RF602.

The quality of the indirect strobe lighting for all intents and purposes resembled available light -with some  wonderful benefits. Speedlights bounced off the ceilings spread light in all directions - softening up the shadows and providing lovely flattering light without any sign of harshness.

They freeze action by virtue of their short but intense burst of light. There would be no risk of motion blur. People were captured sharp and clear. No "tunnel effect" where the subjects are brightly lit and everything else is in dark shadow.

I could use a lower ISO (800) and still shoot at F5.6 - F8, the "sweet spot" for my lens as far as sharpness is concerned. And finally, I could take a long shot of the room and show all the people in it - none of that "tunnel" effect that is so common when camera mounted flash is your only source of light.

Below are two images. The first taken with a flash used with a bounce card mounted on a rotating bracket attached to the camera as the primary (key) light. The second utilizes the chandelier mounted flash bounced off the ceiling with a tiny amount of fill light from a camera-mounted flash using a bounce card. The power level on the camera's flash was either 1/8 or 1/16.

You can see the difference - the girls in the lower image have softer features, you can see highlights in their hair, and the lighting is a bit more interesting.  The upper image has harsh lighting, the hair gets absorbed by the dark background, and there is that deep dark shadow under the chin and in the eye sockets.

This lighting approach cannot be used in all situations - sometimes the room is just too large, or the ceilings are too high. This demands some other form of bounce lighting, perhaps with more powerful monolights with radio or optical triggers, umbrellas or softboxes, etc. But for this application, the little guys were perfect, and everything worked out just fine.