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I have been assigned to take the family group photo for my wife's family reunion coming up soon, and I was wondering if anyone had any tips.

Should I use the 50mm 1.8?

I read somewhere that larger people should be placed towards the center because the lens condenses the center of the image, and thin folks towards the edges. I think it also said that darker skinned people should be placed towards the front or something, and lighter skinned towards the back. This may come to play an issue as she is from a family of 14 kids, 8 of which are adopted. There are First Nations, Koreans, East Indians, and then the home grown kids are pale as a white bucket.

Also, does a flash make sense? Any help is greatly appreciated.

dooda wrote:I have been assigned to take the family group photo for my wife's family reunion coming up soon, and I was wondering if anyone had any tips.

Should I use the 50mm 1.8?

I read somewhere that larger people should be placed towards the center because the lens condenses the center of the image, and thin folks towards the edges. I think it also said that darker skinned people should be placed towards the front or something, and lighter skinned towards the back. This may come to play an issue as she is from a family of 14 kids, 8 of which are adopted. There are First Nations, Koreans, East Indians, and then the home grown kids are pale as a white bucket.

Also, does a flash make sense? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Dooda,
Group photo with Nikon 50/1.8 won't work! Escpecially it's inside the house/ room, Your kit lens maybe better out door or with flash and indoor.

dooda wrote:I have been assigned to take the family group photo for my wife's family reunion coming up soon, and I was wondering if anyone had any tips.

Should I use the 50mm 1.8?

I would think that the 50 might be a tad too long for this, especially when you take the crop factor into osideration. Unless you're wanting to use the light gathering capabilities of this lens - in which case DoF will become an issue - I'd probably be looking at a 24 or 35, or most likely just the kit lens.

What will you be using as your light source?

While I've not heard of the tips that you mentioned, some of them do make sens, especially if you're just using a single or fairly low powered light source, where fall-off can come into play. Darker skins need relatively more light, and lighter skins less, and that sort of placement seems to me to take advantage of that scenario.

gstark wrote:

dooda wrote:I have been assigned to take the family group photo for my wife's family reunion coming up soon, and I was wondering if anyone had any tips.

Should I use the 50mm 1.8?

I would think that the 50 might be a tad too long for this, especially when you take the crop factor into osideration. Unless you're wanting to use the light gathering capabilities of this lens - in which case DoF will become an issue - I'd probably be looking at a 24 or 35, or most likely just the kit lens.

What will you be using as your light source?

While I've not heard of the tips that you mentioned, some of them do make sens, especially if you're just using a single or fairly low powered light source, where fall-off can come into play. Darker skins need relatively more light, and lighter skins less, and that sort of placement seems to me to take advantage of that scenario.

It will probably be outdoors as we rarely find anything indoors that will put us all in frame, unless we all piled on top of eachother, or we were in a gymnasium/amphitheature. If I have the SB 800 by then I may be using that. I believe my mother in law is going to find a good place to take the photo.

What is a decent depth of field for say, two or three rows of people?

Photographic issues aside dooda, that sounds like a fascinating group of people, should be a lot of fun.

I hope you can share the group portrait with us.

cheers

(In addition to the usual group shot configurations, I always try something like tallest one end to shortest at the other end, you could try a "greyscale" shot, assuming everyone is comfortable.)

I have a tip - consume alcohol! (in joke)

Groups shots are my forte. You use the same technique for one person or 5 hundred. I have done group shots of up to 200 persons and I use the following technique

Firstly...pray for an overcast day. It simplifys everything and will ensure a higher quality image. If it is not overcast...the light , (sun), must be not behind the group. If the photographer is looking into the sun the photo will stink. The sun should be around about 45 degrees shining onto the group. It should not be directly behind the photographer because the subjects will have to squint. Squinting makes people look untrustworthy.
Strong frontal lighting also robs the group of form...makes them look flat.

Use the longest focal length lens you can that will allow you to use fill flash. The 50mm should be OK for about 12 or 15 people.

Put the youngest in the front row...sitting cross legged on the ground
Tier the group up into 3 rows. 1 row, (children) sitting on ground
next row sitting on chairs, (need 5 chairs)...next row standing behind chairs. If the group is larger then another row of chairs for some to stand on.
Bunch the group up tight so that no light comes between the bodies.
Keep the camera low on a tripod and use flash at 1 stop less than ambient light. Let the camera use its own brain for the flash. It works very well.
For a group of 12-15 the inbuilt flash should do if you shoot on Apertue mode at f5.6
Focus on the middle row
Do not place the group in front of a brick wall...yuk!
Look for a group of trees or bushes and place the group about 5 meters in front of this. If you have a large tree with an overhanging branch then this placed on the edge of the group can look good.
Do not cut their legs off.
Get close and leave just a little room around the group.
Shoot in RAW. Do not count 1..2..3! before pressing the button.
Tell the group to puff up their chests and stand as tall as they can. Take the pic as soon as they do this. Tell them it was not good enough and puff up bigger and take more shots.
Check your histogram to confirm correct exposure.
Nothing can go wrong.

All good sounds advice from Matt there I think, apart from the brickwall comment. Personally I have found that the introduction of brickwork in a portrait cn be most interesting... just my opinion of course...

My advice (if you can call it that)...

Split the group into thirds, then make sure no-one stands in the middle!!!

Sorry - couldn't resist.

The advice from Matt looks really good, as do the other points listed such as us 'larger bodied' people in the middle. When you think about it, if you have the larger people on the outside of thin people, it will look like we squashed them!

I'd be wary of the grouping by colour - although the theory sounds good, I think the end result would look rather unacceptable in today's society! I'd tend towards trying to split ethnic/colour/(add any other potentially volitile grouping here) so that everyone is well mixed.

Not that I've done too many large group pics - just my 50 cents worth

I tend to agree Sheepie. More important to have an interesting photo than to nick nack with exposure tricks.

Thankyou Matt K for the specific advice. I knew someone on here would have something to say on this.

I appreciate all of the other opinions too. Sometimes you need to be not too wrapped up in the little compositional things and make sure the photo is interesting.

Dooda
I was curious about your comment on placing darker skinned people in the front...I'm not sure where you got that from but it does have some merit. The fill flash will lighten the skintones on the front row more than the other rows. This is a clever way of reducing that effect. To some extent Photoshop can now help even out the exposure....but shooting film one would have to consider the simplicity of the idea...it would help.

Matt,

yeah, it struck me as well. The article lies in a stack of Magazines that occupy an entire shelf in my room. If I get a wild hair up my arse I may go on through and look it up again.

After I read it I dug up a group photo with some different ethnicities, and sure enough those on the back row weren't as well exposed as those on the front. Though this could be me wanting to validate the time I spent reading the article.

dooda wrote:After I read it I dug up a group photo with some different ethnicities, and sure enough those on the back row weren't as well exposed as those on the front.

Well, I see this all the time when I'm shooting bands at pubs and the like. If, for instance, I'm shooting across the stage, or shooting a lead guitarist with the drummer in the background, the light falloff across the area I'm covering can be quite noticeable.

Lighter colours in the background would have a relatively higher reflectivity, and would perhaps not come out quite as dark.

Gary
Understand that. But did it ever occur to you to put the African in the front, the ceylonese behind him, then the Japenese and then the european in the back so that when you hit them with the flash they all came out with the same skin tone? Would that be a form of visual discrimination. Tonally correct but politically or socially a bit off?
Hmmm...too late for the nature competition.

Matt. K wrote:Hmmm...too late for the nature competition.

Would it be natural ?

Thats for the voter to decide (I couldnt think of anything more so!)

M2M` B"]Photographic issues aside dooda, that sounds like a fascinating group of people, should be a lot of fun.
[/quote]

I will indeed. Sometime mid january. We are all meeting at disney world, and they are colorful and fun. Most of them are within about 1 or two years, including four of the older boys all within about 3 years of eachother (imagine a slumber party every night of your adolescent life!) Man, you should hear the stories!

Dooda,

I'm very keen to see the result. I hope you can post a couple of the pics after your shoot.

Good luck.