Lighting Help

[Chili]

Well I just turned down yet another Gig because I will not take a gig that I am not 100% certain I can produce Pro level work. The gig was an indoor soccer event that also included Team and Individual shots. The T&I stuff is the reason I turned the gig down, I'm completely confident I can turn out top rate action shots but haven't a clue for lighting the Team shot properly.

Any help with links to good lighting resources?

 

[Rich Rohrich]

Doug - I've found a ton of useful lighting info using this as a starting point : http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/

 

[Kawidude]

We actually do this stuff all the time. For indoor sports teams we set up two areas, one for individual shots and another for group/team shots. We typically use a simple dropcloth/backdrop as backgrounds (although some guys go crazy with the green screen in the back and then they superimpose soccer fields behind them later...we're not quite at that stage yet.) So for the individual shots we basically set up a mini portrait area. We use a background light (Alien Bee 800), a key and a fill (both White Lightning 1200's). We just use the key at a 45 degree angle with the fill right behind the camera. Once the lights are metered we usually run at 1/60 at f11 at either ISO 160 or 200. We have each child line up with their order envelope and we collect it and number it sequencially with eack kid. As their individual shots are finished we send them over to the team shot area and get them lined up based on height.

For the team shots we use a larger backdrop. I use a more flat lighting for this to ensure that the entire team is evenly lit. Again it's an Alien Bee for the background light and then two White Lightning 1200's. I keep them both about 4-5 feet in front of the camera and evenly spaced, usually 5-6 feet to the sides with the camera centered in between them.

We've done a ton of these jobs and our system seems to work really well for us. We're able to crank out some pretty high volume jobs while maintaining the quality we want to deliver.

Outdoor team shots are different for us. We typically backlight with the sun and then pop a little fill. But obviously your conditions are changing while you're shooting so you need to make more on-the-fly adjustments, depending upon how long you're shooting. If the sun is really harsh we'll set up canopies for a little shade. Hope that helps a little!

I'm attaching an image from a lacrosse league we just did last week. As I mentioned, for outdoor teams we only use a single flash on camera for fill purposes. If you eventually decide to take on teams like this, the best advice I can give you is to make sure you have enough staff to handle it. You need people to coordinate lines, evelopes, numbering and all the other junk so you can focus on the pictures. :cool:

 

[Squid31]

That's sounds like some pretty good advice there Kawidude. I will be checking back on this post as I am just getting started with the lighting stuff as well and I am interested to hear what everyone has to say.