Best setting for indoor family portrait

You can see my gear in my sig, but basically this will be my first portrait of an entire family I have done (10-12 people). I will be doing it on christmas. The only work I've done is on a single subject (my tot) and I'm pretty good with that.

Lighting conditions will be decent, with the christmas tree, kitchen lights and some lamps on in the living room where this would take place. I have a 430 EXII flash that I'll most likely use to pull of the shot.

I guess next would be my shutter,iso and aperture. MY ISO I'm hoping to toggle around 200 because I like to minimize noise myself. Shutter, probably 1/100th to keep it safe.

I guess my confusion is with the aperature. I want the greatest depth of field I'm presuming to get everyone in focus. I always shoot single point selection. I was thinking keep it at f/4.5 or so..

So with that said, any ideas? More than likely I'll shoot with the kit lens 18-55 IS, because the nifty isn't great for focusing anyways, and it may be too long.

Also to mention:
Tripod: Yes, I have one
Bounce Card: Yes I have that if needed?
Timer: I'll prob set 10 sec timer after settings are configured so I can run into the photo myself.

f/8 to start with and shutter speed doesn't matter as long as you keep it below flash sync speed.

...bounce flash off ceiling and raise ISO 'til proper exposure is achieved.

dave

Just set your iso to 200, and put your camera in AV mode, and keep an eye on your shutter speed, making sure it's not slower than your focal length. Or use Shutter mode if you know what shutter speed you want, and let the camera choose the aperture.

F8 for depth of field with a group of that size. Since you are using a flash shutter speed is only relevant in that it has to be below max sync (1/200 or so) and then adjust it depending on the amount of ambient influence you want. !/30 or 1/60 will come closer to balancing the light in the room, faster makes the rest of the room darker.

gonzogolf wrote in post #11498805
F8 for depth of field with a group of that size. Since you are using a flash shutter speed is only relevant in that it has to be below max sync (1/200 or so) and then adjust it depending on the amount of ambient influence you want. !/30 or 1/60 will come closer to balancing the light in the room, faster makes the rest of the room darker.

Right, and I think balancing it would be best. Can you explain the max sync, I wasn't aware of this, nor familiar. I'm worried that 1/60th would be too slow, but I guess I can raise ISO if need be. I'm normally doing manual mode on my flash to balance the ambient....like 1/8th or 16th

Max sync speed is the fastest speed that your flash can sync at (without being in high speed sync mode on your flash). Its the fastest speed on your camera that allows the entire sensor to be exposed to the light at one time. On your camera its 1/250 of a second. Any faster than that and you get a black band on the bottom of your shot. Ordinarily you would have a problem on the other end as you can only handhold at speeds roughly equal to the focal length of your lens (adjusted for the crop factor). But flash changes that a little bit though. If the exposure you get using flash is 2 stops brighter than the ambient the flash will freeze motion. It works by the fact that no matter how long your shutter is open, the blast of light from your flash is of such short duration (1/500 of a second or so) that it freezes the motion. As long as the ambient isnt contributing much its not recorded. I think you should probably stay above 1/60 for this, but experiment with slow speeds and flash just for fun sometime.

so whats the max shutter by stamdard to go before the flash takes over the ambient and it looks like a flash photo?

chugger93 wrote in post #11499020
so whats the max shutter by stamdard to go before the flash takes over the ambient and it looks like a flash photo?

T2i looks like 1/250. So just keep it at 250 or under and you'll be fine. And the question isn't whether it looks like a flash photo, but anything above that shutter speed and your camera won't be able to capture the complete flash.

You should be bouncing or shooting the flash off camera anyways. Never head on.

For indoor flash shots I have been using:

1/80 - 1/125s
f5.6-7.1
flash at +1/3 or +2/3
ISO 400-800 (depending on ho much background I want exposed - sometimes even 1600, higher ISO will allow lit lamps and tree lights, backgorund etc to show up more IF you want that...)

Best of luck, and happy holidays...

chugger93 wrote in post #11498862
Right, and I think balancing it would be best. Can you explain the max sync, I wasn't aware of this, nor familiar. I'm worried that 1/60th would be too slow, but I guess I can raise ISO if need be. I'm normally doing manual mode on my flash to balance the ambient....like 1/8th or 16th

Two separate concepts are needed to be covered here:

1) Do you have a set of gels for the flash? If not, you probably do not want to try and balance the flash with ambient. Your flash is the color temperature of the sun (~6000k) and the lights in your house are likely around 3000K. If you set the white balance for the flash, the house lights will look sickly yellow. If you set for the lights, the subjects will turn blue.

To balance flash with ambient, you must gel the flash to match the color temperature of the ambient lights.

2) Shutter speed does not matter when the flash is the only light source. When you are blending flash with ambient, it may or may not matter. One common technique to blend flash in low light is called dragging the shutter.

To do this, set up the camera (aperture, ISO and shutter speed) so that the ambient light is ~ 1 and 1/3 stops underexposed. You can get away with pretty slow shutter speed (like 1/25 or so) because the main subjects will be mostly lit and thus frozen by the flash.

This technique does not work for fast moving subjects, and you will likely need to gel the flash.

Also note that all that work to blend exposures is a waste of time in most smaller rooms (like in a house) because the background will be close enough to the subjects that the flash will light both anyway. Then just set the shutter to synch speed and dump the ambient light completely.

I wanna touch upon this flash 1/250th subject again so I understand. So what happens if you shot something indoors above 1/250th with your flash? Besides this black border you guys mentioned... will it just not have the same effect? Is this 250th a limitation of my camera or flash? Do other cameras offer higher or something?

I'm just thinking further down the road if I was shooting sports or something and neeeded to go higher

chugger93 wrote in post #11501979
Is this 250th a limitation of my camera or flash?

Camera.

You won't be able to set your camera above your X-sync speed unless you select HSS mode on the flash. In HSS you can go faster. It's really not a limitation, but for general info you should know the difference between sync and HSS.

For your purposes, you can just leave the 430 in HSS all the time, and whenever you go below sync the HSS won't kick in.

The manual that came with the 430 is pretty informative.

What if the flash is in TTL mode? It should sync at any shutter speed correct?