 BetterPhoto Member |
Lighting, indoors, in front of a fireplace Hello everyone! First time user here. I just did a shoot with some friends in front of their fireplace for Christmas pictures. The fire was lit and there was no available natural lighting. I was given the availability of using some flood lights, well that was obviously bad. The room is kind of small and filled with other furniture, making maneuverablity difficult. I used my Nikon N2000 with a small Sunpak flash. I am reshooting these on Thursday and I could really use some help. I have absolutely no money to invest in anything right now, so this needs to be a cheap solution. Thanks, Jill
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Buddy Purugganan |
With the space constraints and lack of sufficient lighting, its best to use an ISO 800 color film from FUJI or KODAK. The 'bounce effect' from your flash ( directed to a white ceiling if your flash has the capability)may be helpful---make sure your batteries have adequate power. Also, the use of wide-angle lens will allow only a few meters distance from your subject so take advantage of either a 24mm, 28mm as long as the FLASH can reach your subjects position.
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Mark Feldstein |
It's probably a bit late, but you didn't mention exactly what problem(s) you had initially or why you didn't use the flood lights you were offered? I'd start by getting some help in moving the furniture where it's either out of the way or you can use it for posing people. In the situation you suggested, like people gathered around a fireplace, you don't necessarily need to be working at ISO 800. I've shot plenty of these scenes using available room light on daylight color negative film at slower shutter speeds. With a tripod or some support, you can easily work below 1/60th and using a pop of fill flash set at a wide angle, emphasize the conflagration in the background, brighten the shadow areas and balance out the tungsten light. Piece of cake, no?
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Andrew Laverghetta |
Hmm, I did something like this but it wasn't really to that extreme. I took some photos of one of my friends to give to her boyfriend for Christmas. She wanted to sit on a bench in front of her fireplace (not lit). There was also a small tree with many light on it behind her. I assume the fireplace will be going in your situation? I'm just back from college so I didn't have anything spiffy to use so I had to whip some things out of almost nothing. If the fireplace will be going, you may want to try to rig up some stuff to reflect as much light as possible. This was only one person so I managed to use a small desk lamp and bounce some light off a white wall so it wasn't direct as direct. I also made sure to use the tungsten lamp to keep that warm color temperature. Forgot to mention, I was using digital so it wasn't nearly as orange because I set it so it was a warmer skin tone but not like daylight. For another shot I bounced that desklight off the back of an LS Ayres box (white cardboard). If I had thought about it, I would have covered it with crunched up foil wrap. If you don't have a tripod, you can see if there's something you can move to sit the camera on. I was using ISO 800 at about 1/15 second at f/2.8. My lens was a 50mm f/1.8 Canon. Hopefully you have a good lens that can open pretty wide or at least 2.8. Maybe you can turn the flash to the right or left side of the camera and use something that's bright white to reflect the light back. Don't forget to compensate by opening the lens a full f-stop or so. I would just say to try to get as much light reflected back to them as possible and even if you don't want to use direct flash, make sure to at least get one shot that has good exposure, either boucing the flash off the ceiling or if you're not sure about that, you can just even use it as a straight head on flash if nothing else. I see that you wrote this on wednesday so thursday was probably yesterday. Hope you got some good shots but yeah, if you've been asked to photograph people in their own space, you'd better be able to move their stuff to get a better shot. Good luck!
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