Taking Graduation Photo


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shmott

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Mar 24, 2002
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Sin jia por lor...
Hi Guys/Gals,

Im asked to take kindergarten class graduation photos by my friend. Its gonna be taken indoor. Do you think i can pullt off without studio lights with just slave flashes? How should i place the slave flashes? and how many of them? CAn fuji superior do the job or do i need pro films? 5R being the biggest enlargement.Need tips from pro/old birds here.Thanks.
 

Two flash will be good enough. (slave or studio)
place one at left and another at right, make sure that both of them are higher than the tallest child/teacher standing or you will get harsh shadow at the background above their head.
If you will be calculating the flash output level manually, make sure you do it right and use the same setting through.
A 50/1.8 lens cannot be bitten for this job. Do not use lenses wider than 50mm if the space allow. This is to prevent from getting perspective distortion cos ppl at different rows stand at different distance from the camera. 85mm lens will even be better but you need a large hall to do this.
Stop down to f/8 or at least f/5.6. this togather with the not so near object distance rise the need for ISO 400 film and two powerful slave flash. (with ISO400 film they need to be at least about GN 25 meter at 50mm coverage). The scene of graduation photo is likely to consist of both dark colour clothes and some other lighter area (skintone at least). Thus you need to use low contrast pro film. Fuji NPH 400 @ ISO320 will be very nice and it cost about $6.80/roll.
 

Thanks Zhoufang.
Been waiting for days for anyone to post some views.Invaluable info.Thanks.

By the way, should i bounce the flashes? how about pointing flash heads 45 degrees towards ceiling?
 

Originally posted by shmott
Thanks Zhoufang.
Been waiting for days for anyone to post some views.Invaluable info.Thanks.

By the way, should i bounce the flashes? how about pointing flash heads 45 degrees towards ceiling?

Normally you don't have the chance to bounce flash cos either the ceiling is too high or it is not pure white.

what you can do is to move the flash as far away from the group as possible and the background closer to the group. This will decrease the difference of the distance between the flash-group and flash-background so the background will not be so much under. Make sure your flash will cover wider than the lens also.
 

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