Additional lighting for indoor Wedding?

setao

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Hello!
A (hopefully) quick question for those of you more experienced out there :)

I am going to shoot a wedding (indoors) not too long from now and would like your advice on additional lighting. I currently have several PBL strobes, see below) and am happy thus far, but I was thinking that I need something else, such as some sort of "reflecting dish" that can "push" the light out/up into the room as I have seen while attending previous weddings.

This will be my second wedding, and although the first went well and I was quite pleased, I would LOVE to have additional lighting to reduce the amount of motion blur, shutter time, etc. Your thoughts?

Thanks!

I have these:
FN160_SKAESER1.jpg


What about something like this, but bigger, "reflecting dish":
2612.jpg
 
There are several alternatives. A softball would be one way about 8' -10' up on a stand. Don't know if the softball will fit your lights or not.

A large soft box or strip box again high in the air in a horizontal position. One of my favorites as it can be easily done in many churches with a single White lightning X3200 on a 13' stand from the rear of the church.

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Parabolic Light Modification would be a third method[/FONT].

Darrel posted this link a while back for bare bulb lighting.

All of these are designed to put a lot of light over a large area and greatly decrease shadows. To do this they need to be high in the air.
 
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Thanks for the quick reply! It is much appreciated.

I like the idea of a bare bulb, but I'm not sure that it may serve as much purpose as a strip box would in the future. (But I do LOVE the small size and portability!)

One of my last (that's probably a lie) questions pertaining to the LARGE strip box is, if I place it in a large room (I can upload pictures of the actual location in a few days after I get them), where and how (generally) would I place it? You mentioned that you only place it on a 13 inch mount (at that level or higher?) and it can fill an entire (or large) room with light from the single strip box? (Such as in the rear and pointed towards the ceiling as a bounce or somehow balanced higher and pointing down?) Remember that I only have a PBL 160w/s, not those million-dollar White Lightnings :) (And if the aforementioned setup would be adequate, I wouldn't mind getting two to assist with the 160w/s lights that I currently have.) Thank you again so much!

(Cheaper Amazon light for "quality" [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Interfit-SLBR7190-28-Inch-75-Inch-Without/dp/B0024NKJXE/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1274320815&sr=1-10"]comparison[/ame]:)
31G9BWcr2IL._SL500_AA300_.jpg


Or the Bowen's 55"x16" strip box
545238.jpg
 
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Thanks for the quick reply! It is much appreciated.

I like the idea of a bare bulb, but I'm not sure that it may serve as much purpose as a strip box would in the future. (But I do LOVE the small size and portability!)

One of my last (that's probably a lie) questions pertaining to the LARGE strip box is, if I place it in a large room (I can upload pictures of the actual location in a few days after I get them), where and how (generally) would I place it? You mentioned that you only place it on a 13 inch mount (at that level or higher?) and it can fill an entire (or large) room with light from the single strip box? (Such as in the rear and pointed towards the ceiling as a bounce or somehow balanced higher and pointing down?) Remember that I only have a PBL 160w/s, not those million-dollar White Lightnings :) (And if the aforementioned setup would be adequate, I wouldn't mind getting two to assist with the 160w/s lights that I currently have.) Thank you again so much!

(Cheaper Amazon light for "quality" comparison:)
31G9BWcr2IL._SL500_AA300_.jpg


Or the Bowen's 55"x16" strip box
545238.jpg

Sorry my fingers were dyslexic. It should have read 13' (foot) stand. You would be correct. Up high pointed down a bit to light the alter, area you want. I am not familure with your lights so you might need a couple of boxes and lights to get enough output. Unfortunately you are going to have to play with it to get what you need/like. The White lightning X3200 has quite a bit of power. Often it needs to be dialed down a bit which is easily doable. Dialing up power beyond a heads capability is the hard part. That's where playing around a bit unfortunately comes into play.
 
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Depending on the location, your best bet may be to just shoot your lights up into the ceiling. If you can set up a few lights, to make it fairly even, you might get the effect of a well lit room. It's not dramatic but it's safe & easy when you are going to be shooting all over a room.
 
gryphonslair99 - thanks again for the info. I may even be able to go back to Adorama.com and use their rental program so that I can rent a WL 3200 or something similar just for a few days to ensure that it will work properly for such a large area.

Big Mike - thank you for the reply as well. That was one of my original ideas - I can order 4 more strobes (of the same/similar type, around 160w/s) and point them up - but when I tried this with one, for testing purposes, in a low-to-reasonably lit room with a lower ceiling, there was a massive "hot spot." Admittedly this is nearly the opposite of where I'll be shooting, but I don't want to get into that situation when on location, where I would have more light, but 7 huge "hot spots" around the perimeter of the room. That's why I was hoping that there would be some form of "reflecting dish" to better help dissipate the flash. Any recommendations?

Now that I think about it, does Adorama.com ship their rentals or do you have to pick them up? (As I'm not in NY :) ) And how many w/s do you think would make the large strip box effective for this type of usage? (Meaning would a ~300w/s do the job, or would I need the power of the 1300-3000w/s? - Asking because financing this for really one event now would be difficult :) poor college kid!)
 
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Big Mike - thank you for the reply as well. That was one of my original ideas - I can order 4 more strobes (of the same/similar type, around 160w/s) and point them up - but when I tried this with one, for testing purposes, in a low-to-reasonably lit room with a lower ceiling, there was a massive "hot spot." Admittedly this is nearly the opposite of where I'll be shooting, but I don't want to get into that situation when on location, where I would have more light, but 7 huge "hot spots" around the perimeter of the room. That's why I was hoping that there would be some form of "reflecting dish" to better help dissipate the flash. Any recommendations?
A reflecting dish usually concentrates and directs the light, which would give you more of a hot spot than not using one.

Every location is going to be different. Sometimes you can point the light into a corner, letting it bounce out in many directions. Sometimes you can angle the lights so they aren't going right up to the ceiling, but are skimming across it. Sometimes you just have to put the lights up high and point them down into the room.

What I like to do, is to put a light up on a stand and combine that with on-camera flash. The on-camera is usually just a fill light, often diffused or bounced...while the remote light gives me a nice directional light.
 
Big Mike,
Thanks again! I may try to use several of the flashes on a tripod mounted high up pointing down without any umbrellas or dishes to reduce hot spots and using my sb-600 as a fill. Sounds like it may work. I still like the idea of a big strip box :) I'll have to upload several pictures of the location and get your expertise. If it works well enough I'll have to hire you as my consultant. Thanks again!

(Also, if I were to go with the strip box, what w/s would be adequate, and not overkill, price and power-wise, for the box?)
 
Also, if I were to go with the strip box, what w/s would be adequate, and not overkill, price and power-wise, for the box?
Totally depends on the distance from the light to the subjects and the aperture and ISO you can/want to use. So in other words, I can't really say.

For a large room, I'd want at least 300 Ws...but something smaller may be enough to 'boost the ambient'.
 
I don't think with modern lighting you can really have over kill. You can always dial the power down to fit your needs. It's that dialing the power up beyond the limits of the head that becomes the real problem. :mrgreen:

Of course like everything in photography, and the world for that matter, more power is going to cost more money. If possible, before you commit to any particular equipment purchases along this line, you might try and rent from a local photography shop, if you have one, the type of gear you are looking at. Good luck.
 

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