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I would love some help right now.

I am photographing a wedding in a few weeks at the Hyatt Canberra. Would you believe it is a 5:00pm ceremony and is indoors? Tonight I met with the couple to view the area and discuss possible location shots.

It is my worst nightmare come true!!!! I need some advice from anyone that may have photographed under extreme low light conditions. The room – or should I say massive titled foyer with 30 foot ceilings is where the ceremony will be. Behind the foyer is a beautiful garden courtyard that is beautifully green (in daylight) will be almost total darkness and is covered by 30 feet of window glass (I’m guessing bad flash reflections )!!! There will also be 140 guests 16 in the bridal party.

I have a nice selection of gear to use (will be shooting film and digital) – that’s not really my concern. My main hassle in flash techniques………… how on earth will I make this place look as beautiful as it really is under these conditions?

Hi Kellogs,

I have no experience whatsoever with the environment you are mentioning. I also don't know what camera gear you have ...
I would like to sugest that you consider to go to the Hyatt hotel with the gear you have at 17:00 and survey the site well before the wedding.
If you happen to have a SB600 or SB800 try some slave flash.
Do the reconossence and you will get a good idea.

HTH,
CD

i agree wait for the golden hour and see how lights play with the area while enjoying a coffee, bring a ps camera for recon.

you could also bring in you own lights to help light the area or slow sync flash with extremly frozen subjects

christiand wrote:Hi Kellogs,

I have no experience whatsoever with the environment you are mentioning. I also don't know what camera gear you have ...
I would like to sugest that you consider to go to the Hyatt hotel with the gear you have at 17:00 and survey the site well before the wedding.
If you happen to have a SB600 or SB800 try some slave flash.
Do the reconossence and you will get a good idea.

HTH,
CD

great advice. Grab a friend and get down to the venue well prior so you can suss it all out before the night. You won't want to be holding up precedings thinking about what you need to do, so it would be strongly advisable to know what will and wont work BEFORE the night.

That way you can keep your mind at ease and concentrate on taking some great photos !

Unfortunately, you're going to be stuck with shooting to a formula.

Manual exposure, ISO200, SB800 (or better) set to A, 1/125 @ f/5.6 or f/8, and lens and flash set to match one another.

Use a pocket softbox or SBII, and direct. Even thinking about bouncing the flash will lose you all of its light output!

Lots of spare batteries too, btw.

You may want to consider renting some studio or flood lights at the time when you are taking the shots - at strategic locations, of course. A few spots lights to brighten up the background.

In addition, you should do some test shots prior to the actual day to find the best location for the lights, good spots for taking people shots and which spots that must avoid to get flash reflections.

It will be a great learning experience.

cheers,

Arthur

Thanks Arthur - I had actually considered renting some additional lighting. The only problem with that is being in Canberra, I don't think there is anywhere that hires that sort of equipment.

I plan on making a few trips there to "experiment" before the big day so fingers crossed.

Thanks everyone for your tips.

Kellogs wrote:Thanks Arthur - I had actually considered renting some additional lighting. The only problem with that is being in Canberra, I don't think there is anywhere that hires that sort of equipment.

I plan on making a few trips there to "experiment" before the big day so fingers crossed.

Thanks everyone for your tips.

Hi

Have you checked? Try white pages. Try yellow pages. Try Bunning. It there's a will, there's a way.

Good luck.

regards,

Arthur

Shoot at a 30th or 25th on tripod so you pick up some of the house lighting so the background does not go black, a wider opened F stop will give you a bit more speed and say 320 iso or 400 iso
The best thing to do is some test pix's also try some at a higher iso but be careful as you also run the risk of blowing out the whites, and noise, so have your test model wear white, also a bracket of exposures on the important shots will help
Shooting with glass in the background try and keep to about a 30 to 45 degree angle to the glass then no reflection, but the glass area will go black unless there is some light there. Additional flashes with slaves will help a lot

good luck
bp

EDIT: you can light the foreground and background when shooting by using an extra flash, slave unit and a willing helper

hotels usually have av dept for conferences and another shit.
give them a call and see if you can hire their stuff for set-up for you.
lights, bg. also you better get liabilty insurnace in case someone trips over the lights as the hotel might not like you gaffer taping their mable floors. make sure you get their okto shoot there as well.

many years ago I used to work professionally at weddings and the like.

I had a few experiences like this.
Sometimes fairly decent lights are already in place to light the garden etc up. Maybe there are lights available??

Sometimes when additional lights were unavailable I used slave flash on the background.

The high ceilings will obviously take the sting out of your flash guns if you bounced it.

I used to have back ups for everything so 2 or more flashes were always available.

I assume that because you are using film and digital that you will also have 2 flashes. You should be able to buy a basic slave trigger for your flash guns for not much money. This could be a worthwhile piece to have anyhow because you can even use it for portrait work if you arent using lights.

finally you need to ensure that you dont shoot straight at the glass for obvious reasons.

I would definitely check out the layout prior to the event and take some test shots, and determine where to be and where not to be

Steve

Hi Kellogs,

1. Use fast glass, at least F2.8. Great if you have some F1.4 glass
2. Maybe shoot wide open.
3. Make sure to set white balance
4. How is the lighting in the room? Try to use the room lighting.
3. Try Bounce flash, you will be surprise how powerful the SB800 is. ceiling too high? bounce of wall?
4. shoot manually
5. last resort, shoot flash directly, decrease flash output or use softbox.

Bring a tripod for some overview captures from high above with no flash.

Hope this helps

Maybe increase use iso400?

or get a canon 20D with a 50mm f1.4 iso800? set to B&W mode and have some fun

If you are forced to use direct flash the place your groups at an angle to any background glass to avoud hot spots. Absolutely do a reconn and some test shots well before the wedding.If you can shoot at 400 ISO without flash then the images will be OK with a little noise removal after the event.