Inquiry on Lighting

[Rockers]

Hi fellow CSers, can anyone here help me with some question that needs answers.
1. If you were to shoot a group photograph in a Hall (community Club) for 35 ppl, what is the set up for the lighting? (continuous or strobe)
2. How much power rating of the lights you need? 300watt, 500watt or 1000watt?
3. If Slave flash are to be used, how many sets do you need? 1pair, 2pair?
4. And last, how do you position the lighting unit and the slave flash? 45 deg left and right or 30 deg left and right or any best angle?

Thank You.

 

[catchlights]

for lighting up a group photo of 35 pax, you are looking a 9 persons wide with 4 persons deep.
your main concern is to get even exposure from left to right, front to back, to achieve this, you need to place the light as far back as possible, and as high as possible.

there are two schools of group photo set up, one school prefer to use two light have same output at 45 degree cross lighting set up to get even lighting, but this will have two set of shadows on the people.
another school prefer to use only one light set up at high above the camera angle to get even lighting, but this need a studio flash able to deliver up to 3K watt/s.

if you photos are not print too big, you can shoot in a higher ISO make up insufficient of flash power.

 

[Rockers]

Great info Bro. If you were to used a pair of 350watts of Continuous Lights (700watts for 2) and two slave flash (700watts for two), will it be enough for the 35 ppl group photo? And shoot with 3200 ISO, will it help? Or maybe add two more units of SB800 mounted on tripod? What do you think?

 

[catchlights]

if you use mixed lightings with different color temperature to light your subjects, you will be in the hot soup during the post.

ISO 3200? depend you shoot it with a D70 or a D700.

simple lighting set up.

we are taking the lights about 15 ft tall, can your tripods do that?

 

[Rockers]

Really great help from you. Well, if tats the case, I think I can jolly well forget about it. Seem tat equipment is the main issue here. Btw, im using D300 and the person doing the shoot is using D700.

Regards, Rockers.