Wedding lighting help...from sunlight to a barn

[mstone]

I'm going to be doing my cousin's wedding and the reception is in an old barn, so there's no way I can bounce light. Given the way the barn is constructed, I also can't put lights on stands like I want to; it's just not practical. I also don't have an assistant to walk around with a pole or hold a reflector. So, it's just me and my on-camera SB800. In a barn. In the evening. With very little light. However, there are a few beams that span the middle of the barn, above where most of the people should be during the reception. They're maybe 18-20 feet up, and spaced out every 12 feet or so I'd guess. I'm wondering if (assuming I can get up there and figure out a way to do it) mounting a speedlight to two of the beams and pointing them down with their diffusers on will help my lighting situation. With just the on-camera, I risk getting shadows that I don't want, or having a dark background. My thought with having 2 SBs up high is that it would be somewhat similar to bouncing off a ceiling....the obvious difference being that bouncing creates a large area of light, whereas using a SB up high is still only a small light source. I'd probably only fire the flash that's behind the people at the time of my shot, turning off the one that's closest/in front of them since I'll have my on-camera flash.

If it matters, I'd be using a D700 with a mounted SB800, and then two SB900s in the rafters with Pocket Wizard Plus III's. Lens will primarily be 24-70mm 2.8, so fast glass should help too.

This isn't super critical to my success here, most pictures come out fine with just the one light on the camera (I have a Rogue flash bender that I attach to the SB to bounce light...I highly recommend them...), but if I can find a way to incorporate more lights, it would obviously be that much better. Would this idea help, do you think? It'll be a pain to figure out the right power output for them since I won't be able to touch them all night, so I'd probably play it safe and keep it on the low end rather than the high end; I'd rather them do very little than to make people's heads glow.


Also, the ceremony is going to take place outside in late-afternoon sidelight (well, sidelight when they're facing out towards the crowd. Sun will be west-northwest and the ceremony is pointing south-southwest). Brutal. Aside from staying front and center to utilize my flash (again, only my on-camera SB) to minimize harsh shadows, is there anything else I can do to tame the sun? I'm making sure the bride has her back to the sun when she's turned facing the groom so the front of her dress doesn't look like a flood lamp, but that's really all I've got for ideas. I'm generally opposed to using filters on top-notch glass like the 24-70mm but are there any filters that could help? To make things even more interesting, there's another dark barn immediately behind the bride and groom, and it will likely be shaded (so a dark brown barn made all the darker by being in the shade, while the bride and groom are 6 feet in front of it in the bright grass in full sun). Any way to combat THAT? Can I use the shutter speed to control the background light / barn, and rely on the flash and aperture settings to control the exposure of the bride and groom, knowing that the barn will likely still be underexposed by at least a stop or two (which is probably a good thing anyway)?

This wedding is a portfolio builder for me as it's my first one, to see how I like it. I typically do sports...weddings are a little different. My cousin knows that and isn't really expecting much at all, but I have high standards for myself and want to be able to put a successful wedding under my belt. I did their engagement photos and they came out great, but it was also extremely overcast so I found it much easier to work. People tell me I'm shooting in the two worst conditions (late-afternoon sidelight followed by a dim barn) but that's no excuse for mediocrity; I know it's more than doable. I just need a little help getting there. Any input would be GREATLY appreciated. If anyone would like to see what the barn looks like I can post some photos or a link to previous weddings that were done there.

Thank you!!!

 

[tirediron]

Simple answer to both questions: More light! Rent (or buy) some studio lights; without seeing the interior of the barn, it's difficult to imagine, but I would probably try and light it so that I could get an overall exposure of say 1/250 @ f4. Depending on the actual area involved, and the beam to ceiling distance, you could be looking at 500 or 750 w/s lights. The same for the outside shots. One 500 w/s light with a nice 60 or 72" octabox will make all of your sun troubles go away. As for filters, given the time of day, I doubt there are any which would be useful.

 

[jadelm31]

yes, then won't he need some major power cord extensions to reach an outlet, somewhere? Unless you go battery operated but that has got to be pricey right?

It also depends how large of a group you are trying to light. Bride/groom...not so bad. Large wedding party? Definitely more difficult and a lot more light.

 

[TCampbell]

Ok, so you're doing this for your cousin. Are there zero friends or relatives that could walk around with a side-light (mount a flash on a mono-pod)? That's how I shot weddings for years... photographer & side-lighter.

Forget about hanging lights all over... that's not going to work. There are a number of standard reception shots (first dance, father/daughter, groom/mother, etc. wedding party dance shots, garter toss, bouquet toss, cutting and feed the cake, etc.) and then everything else are largely candid shots. You'll be all over the place. Due to the light fall-off, distance from each light would be critical. A side-light is a much more controllable situation.

Also... don't bother trying to bounce. The natural wood as a bounce surface will create a strong yellow color-cast in your flash. If a surface has a color (isn't color-neutral like "white"), then bouncing off that surface is basically the same as gelling your flash to the color of that surface.

As for the outside... you "tame" the sun by using a flash.

You can't do anything about the intensity of the sun (without being burned at the stake for witchcraft) -- so that's out. But what you CAN control is how much flash you contribute. When a flash provides nearly as much light as the sun, it tames the sun because you get to dial back your exposure. The only rub here is that you would generally dial back exposure by using a higher f-stop and that's going to change the character of background blur. You can't increase the shutter speed because you're not allowed to exceed the max shutter sync speed... UNLESS... you have flash that supports "high speed sync" (HSS). There is also an option of using an ND filter on the lens -- that's sort of like closing down the aperture because you're reducing light transmission. Except since the aperture isn't physically smaller, you still get the quality of a wide aperture (you can still have your background blur.)

The "catch" with HSS is that the flash has to rapidly pulse while the the focal plane shutter sweeps across the sensor surface and that means it can't deal one full-power burst of light. So you'll need to test the characteristics of YOUR specific flash (given it's power level) and determine how far you can be to take a high speed shot and still get good exposure. Also the flash will typically need more recycle time.

To counter the recycle time and flash power output problem, you may have to "cluster" multiple flashes. They make brackets that will, for example, allow you to cluster 3 flashes or even 6 flashes so that the power output and recycle delays are no longer a problem. This pretty much REQUIRES a side-lighter though since you can't realistically mount 3+ flashes on your camera hot-shoe.

 

[tirediron]

yes, then won't he need some major power cord extensions to reach an outlet, somewhere? Unless you go battery operated but that has got to be pricey right?

It also depends how large of a group you are trying to light. Bride/groom...not so bad. Large wedding party? Definitely more difficult and a lot more light.

Modern monolights draw relatively little current; regular 14/2 lawnmower-type extension cords will be more than adequate for runs up to 100'; I'm making the assumption that if the barn is suitable for a wedding reception, it has basic hotel services including sufficient outlets. If not, then battery packs are an option, however they will definitely add to the price of either purchase or rental.

 

[jadelm31]

TCampbell.....how do you compensate for needing more flash but still wanting that nice shallow depth of field?

 

[TCampbell]

TCampbell.....how do you compensate for needing more flash but still wanting that nice shallow depth of field?

The idea behind "more flash" is to get the flash within a stop of the sunlight. I find I like to have more sun than flash... but it's nice to get the flash to, say, about 2/3rds of a stop lower than the sun. 1 stop lower means the sun is providing 2/3rds of all the light and the flash is provide 1/3rd of the light. The point of this is that regardless of what you do with how much light the camera is going to collect... you want to maintain some ratio of light between sun and flash. I hesitate to use the term 'balance' because I don't want to confuse people to thinking I want 50/50 light contribution. You probably want about 70/30 or 60/40 light contribution (the weaker value coming from the flash.)

If you still want a shallow DoF (remember if you're out in full sun and you can't move the whole event into the shade -- and probably you cannot) and you want a shallow DoF, you could use a neutral density filter.

The outdoor rule for full sun is the "sunny 16" rule. That says that at ISO 100, you can set the shutter speed to the inverse of the ISO *if* you use f/16. But you don't want to use f/16 due to DoF preferences, you have to start playing the exposure trading game.

You can drop the f-stop to f/11 and increase the shutter speed to 1/200th. But if you go beyond 1/200th (or whatever the camera's max shutter sync speed is) then you could use flash that supports high-speed sync. That comes with it's own nuances and is why I mentioned clustering flashes.

BUT... if you use a neutral density filter, you get to behave AS THOUGH you are reducing the aperture when in reality you are still leaving it open. Suppose I want f/4. That's 3 stops down from f/11. I could use a 3 stop ND filter (ND 0.9), use f/11, ISO 100, 1/200th (assuming that's not beyond the flash sync speed) then add fill flash to fix the shadows. You can treat this all as an "equivalent" of a Sunny 16 exposure.

You are shooting with an f-stop which is 3 stops wider... but using the ND filter to cut those three stops worth of light. That means you've balanced the trading game and the exposure will be correct. Since the ratio of flash to sunlight was good BEFORE you used the ND filter... it's STILL good because you've haven't changed any lighting ratios and you don't need to switch to high-speed sync on the flash.

If your flash has high speed sync, you could shoot at three stops faster shutter (1/1600th) and open the f-stop 3 stops wider (f/4) and not bother with an ND filter. Just be aware that due to the fact that a flash cannot release a full-power flash when using high speed sync means you'll have to verify that your flash can handle the shot (and you will likely have longer recycle times) -OR- you can "cluster" those flashes so that you split the load among multiple units instead of forcing one to do all the lighting.

 

[mstone]

Thank you for all your responses. Very helpful and much appreciated.

Given my gear and funds availability, I think using the ND filter and/or maybe HSS is exactly what I was looking for. I have 2 SB900's available for off-camera use, so I could cluster them with their battery packs and should get a good recycle time that way. I should be able to rent a large softbox to stick them in.

For the barn, it may come down to weather. If it's nice out we'll have all table and chairs outside, so the barn will be mostly empty for a giant dance floor. That would give me room for lights. But if it's sketchy weather, the tables and chairs come in, plus all the people, the live band, and other miscellaneous tables of things, and it gets very cramped very quickly; probably no safe, reliable place to put a light stand. Below is the best picture I could find that shows the barn. The right side is open all the way to the ceiling as you can see, but the left side has a storage loft, so the "ceiling" there is only about 9 feet. The beams I wanted to mount the SBs to are just above where this photo is cut off. The flag hangs down in the middle of the barn, so I would put one flash on each side of the flag. Overall, the barn is 40x60. I believe the middle section between the posts is 15 feet. The photo below really captures the essence and ambiance of the barn perfectly, so I'm trying to minic this look. What I struggle with is the shadows created by using on-camera flash and getting a nice even exposure for the whole length of the barn (and even the sky through the door in this shot). My test shots in the barn were very dark in the back if I took a long shot like this. Sometimes that darkness is good, but for something like this I love that the entire frame is exposed well. Does that again just come down to metering for the background (back of the barn in this case), and using the flash to fill in and light up the foreground properly?

 

[mstone]

Also, when shooting out in the sun during the ceremony, the groom will be facing the sun at times. Is there any way to avoid hotspots on his face? Is that overcome by the techniques already described?