georgeretired Loc: Manitoba Canada

I'm shooting with a canon 50D and using a canon speedlite 430 EXll with cactus triggers. I will take two lens; Canon 10-22 and Canon 24-70. In gear I have a 12" soft box and umbrellas both white / white and white / black.
In two weeks I will be shooting a 15 person anniversary supper party in a private room at a restaurant. Lighting is poor as are most restaurants.
Question....Not really wanting to use my camera flash but to defuse the light through either a soft box or an umbrella. I do have plug in lights but not really wanting to take cords etc as the event is a family one and I will be in the pictures and not wanting to spend all my time with set up etc.
For those members who have success in this environment and project I would really appreciate your suggestions and advice in the lighting and even camera set up. I shoot RAW and usual Av or Tv. Much appreciated.

tradio Loc: Oxford, Ohio

What about "on camera" flash and using the "black foamy thing"? Assuming you can bounce.

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

The 430 should do the job, with the umbrella. Use the w/b umbrella as a reflector towards the group, not as a shoot through. The black will help push the light forward instead of dissipating out the backside. Depending on the distance, the 430 may be at it's limit, so you will have to test and adjust.

If you are in the shots, put the camera on manual focus and prefocus.

Personally, I would set up and shoot in manual, not AV or TV. Once you get your exposures right, camera will not make any exposure changes that would affect the shot.

Hopefully practice before the dinner so you will have a good estimate of what your base setup will be, tweaking as you go. As the cactus triggers are manual, you will be shooting manual flash and pre-prep is key to smooth shooting.

georgeretired Loc: Manitoba Canada

Thanks for all the suggestions. I will be doing a run at home the evening before in a similar light situation. I can see advantages in Manual after I try the results of other shots. Keeping my fingers crossed as my wife and I are the centre attraction being our 50th Anniversary. Can't blame anyone else for sloppy photography.

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

Congratulations on your wedded bliss. This camera thing is nothing compared to your ongoing achievement.

Are your plug in lights strobe or continuous? IF strobe, you can set up one or two to bounce some fill into the room in general to boost the background light.

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

Here is my "different" take on this.

IF the restaurant is really that dark, and you don't want to set up all kinds of gear in everyone's way...do this:

Put up two flashes on stands, one in each corner of the room or area as close to it as you can..you can approximate...they should face the wall or corners and be high up out of anyones normal level eye shot. (Because you currently only have one flash I'd suggest you get a YN560 from Amazon...they are about 40.00 or 50.00 used or 60.00 new and they have a great optical slave...no need for an additional trigger.)

What you are trying to accomplish is to flood the area with just "some" even lighting, enough so that you can use a reasonable aperture and shutter speed. You will still shoot as if all the light is from lamps...but you are just "raising the ambient level." I've done this a lot and it works great. You'd be amazed at how much light you get from a few speedlights.


Use your triggers, set the flashes on 1/4 to start...and adjust from there until you get what settings you need. They will be high up and not even really noticable to everyone...remember...they are just providing a few stops....not lighting up the place like yankee stadium.


I did an example about this on the 'hog some time ago...in my own living room...here is the link:

http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-93761-1.html

Barring this approach...I highly suggest you check out the link in the previous posters comment about the black foamie thing.


Here is a link about using that:

http://neilvn.com/tangents/bounce-flash-photography-and-inverse-square-law/

cthahn

You had better starting to learn how to use multiple flash, off the camera. Soft boxes and umbrellas are for studio work.

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

I tried the "strobist" way, but am back to bringing my studio monolights with me to event shoots. Did an 80th birthday party in an Italian place that had a side room. Sold $400 worth of prints for 30 minutes work. It is worth it to set up my lighting properly. If people are in shadow, or things are underexposed, so I have to fix it in post, and get too much noise, then I lose money. The 10 minutes I spend setting up my lights, even though there are cords for now, just sold another $640 worth of 5x7's at a we4dding reception, and am going to use that for battery packs for the strobes.)

Just my 2 cents, that's what works for me, but everyone is different.

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

I just sat through a talk of a little over an hour given by one of the top wedding photographers in the country. I asked him about off camera flash and here is how he lights his room (like for a reception): He uses what he refers to as the triangle of light. He positions two speed lights fired through Halos (shoot through umbrellas with a silver backing to reflect light that would otherwise be lost in the bounce-back of the umbrella he is firing into). A third Halo is positioned center on the other side of the room. He shoots at 1200 ISO at a shutter speed of 30th of a sec. He puts an orange jell on all his Halos to balance them with the lights normally used in these venues. I usually shoot events like this at 25th of a sec. and ISO 800. At a wedding this past weekend I decided to try 1200 and it turned out great. The high ISO does a couple of things. It keeps the flash down so that it is hardly seen by the people in the room and it saves battery power. I asked him how he powered his flash since it would be inconvenient to swap batteries on three remote flash units. He uses a battery pack and gets around 600 shots. The battery packs hold 8 AA's and the flash 4, so he has 12 AA's for each flash. I didn't have time to get all the equipment together for the shoot the day after I listened to his talk but I did shoot at 1200 ISO with good results. One thing you will find is that focusing in a dark room is difficult. I found a solution for that. I used an led continuous light source and aimed it at the celling. It provided just enough extra light in the room to allow my camera to focus while not being noticed by the wedding guests since it was bouncing off the celling. The next wedding I shoot I will have the equipment to set up as I described. I think of this as a heat-pump solution to lighting. A heat pump uses the btu's already in the air and adds just enough to bring the heat to a desired level. By using a high ISO and slow shutter speed you are using as much of the light in the room as you can and just supplementing it with your flash. Also I find if you use a wider angle lens and get closer to the action it helps from the standpoint that you will nail your focus better. Some people do use high power mono lights for this type of shooting but this can be very unpleasant for the guests to have strong lights continually going off in their faces. Good luck on you shoot! Hope this helps. By the way, the photographer was Bob Davis. You can go to his website at bobandawndavis.com. He shoots a lot of celebrity weddings. He did the Tony Parker/Eva Longoria wedding and also the Bachelorette wedding.

georgeretired Loc: Manitoba Canada

Thank-you all for the input with my question of "off camera lighting" I did visit the place twice and did some set up a few hours before the event. Lighting was really bad. It had that "romantic" atmosphere with hardly enough light to see what you were eating. I did set up two light stands with "always on" lights and also used a small soft box that I attached to my external flash. Results were not too bad considering there was not the room to properly display the lighting. With 20 people in the room, lights, tripods etc., it was careful moving while the pictures were being taken. Biggest challenge was shoot a group with three rows as the back row was shy on light. Its' not that I could move back the camera. I did use both my 24-70 and 10-22 for the shots....with the 10-22 being used most of the time.
Anyway, I did learn better techniques from some of the UGG members. Thanks again. This was our 50th Wedding Anniversary, so I am hoping at my 100th to be that much better.......like I'm just kidding.

Wife and myself along with our 3 adult children


full group of guests minus the one clicking the shutter and those not wanting to be photographed

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

Nice shots. You have a lovely family and I'm sure you are very proud of it. Hope some of the things I mentioned helped.

Wall-E Loc: Phoenix, AZ

What is a "black foamy thing"?

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

Wall-E Loc: Phoenix, AZ

I never would have thought to use a light absorbing material as a flash reflector.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

It doesn't reflect, it helps keep direct light spill off of the subject when you bounce. Lemee see if I can post an example.