Christmas party portraits

Going to be shooting Christmas party portraits again this year. One to three people in the photos. The past two years we have had a small tree in the photos. Have been using one strobe at 30-40 degrees off camera axis, and one fill light along the camera axis. Have been shooting f/4-f/5.6.

I've shot high ISO in the past to pickup the lights on the Christmas tree. Is there a better way to do this. The only other way I know is to shoot a slow shutter with the flash (drag the shutter?), but I don't think that will work with live humans in the photo.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance...

Hi

I found this to get you in the general direction

https://photographylif​e.com …as-tree-in-the-background

In a nutshell, you shoot with flash and try to control the flash so that it lights up the subjects (people) and not shine at the Christmas tree

KatManDEW wrote in post #18488318
Going to be shooting Christmas party portraits again this year. One to three people in the photos. The past two years we have had a small tree in the photos. Have been using one strobe at 30-40 degrees off camera axis, and one fill light along the camera axis. Have been shooting f/4-f/5.6.

I've shot high ISO in the past to pickup the lights on the Christmas tree. Is there a better way to do this. The only other way I know is to shoot a slow shutter with the flash (drag the shutter?), but I don't think that will work with live humans in the photo.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance...

Set your composition.

Place your lights.

Set camera settings to expose your tree and ambient light in general, without your subjects. This can be full normal exposure, or slightly reduce ambient light exposure a little, or you could over-expose a little if you wanted to.

Now set your lights exposures to blend into ambient as you wish, and set the exposures for either fill or key to your liking.

The closer your lights are to the subject(s), and the lower their power, the faster the fall off (which can help from up-exposing ambient stuff).

Very best,

Make sure you bring some extra lights. Usually natural light sucks at this type of venues.

Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful replies! Attached is a photo from last year. 1/100 second, f/5.6, ISO 1250, gave pretty good results with one off camera softbox and one fill. We're going to use a Christmas backdrop instead of a black one this year. The only thing that worries me about that is that I often have trouble with shadows on backdrops.

Image hosted by forum (884795) © KatManDEW THIS IS A LOW QUALITY PREVIEW. Please log in to see the good quality stuff.

Be sure to keep some distance between the backdrop and the tree and people. Let the light falloff work to your benefit.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18491477
Be sure to keep some distance between the backdrop and the tree and people. Let the light falloff work to your benefit.

Thank you!