lighting outdoor dance floor lots of questions

I am about to shoot my first wedding in a couple of months and feel very comfortable with shooting the ceremony and portraits but i have one area where i really need some help.

i have read MANY threads on lighting a dance floor but many leave out a few key details and that is what my questions are about.

i will be shooting with an on camera flash 430 ex and a one more strobe off camera. my main question is how to gauge the appropriate power levels for the off camera strobe. The reception i will be shooting will be outside so i cant bounce off anything and as it gets darker i will not have a quick on the fly method of adjusting the off camera strobe, i will have to take a break from shooting at that point.

any suggestions on how to get a good looking image for an outdoor dance floor at night are welcome. i really need suggestions so i can practice before then

another one of my concerns is knowing how much light to add from the off camera flash, do you figure this out before the reception or do you measure and adjust as you go?

This is what I would do:

- High ISO
- On camera flash pointed straight at the subject (offcourse this will be on a pretty low power setting).
- Off camera flash at maybe 1/32th.

Basically you use the flash as fill light rather than main light. Use the high ISO and quick lens to get most of the light.

I have taken pics in almost pitch black with on camera flash and it looks perfect.


Eg)

580exii on camera flash in almost pitch black conditions.

This is the first time I'm posting one of my pictures so I hope everyone is honest but gentle

As seen in the picture below, I shoot the reception with a strobe setup off the corner of the dance floor, set to 1/32 or 1/64 and a strobe on-camera set on ETTL with a gary fong diffuser.

oceanbeast wrote in post #14537081
I am about to shoot my first wedding in a couple of months and feel very comfortable with shooting the ceremony and portraits but i have one area where i really need some help.

i have read MANY threads on lighting a dance floor but many leave out a few key details and that is what my questions are about.

i will be shooting with an on camera flash 430 ex and a one more strobe off camera. my main question is how to gauge the appropriate power levels for the off camera strobe. The reception i will be shooting will be outside so i cant bounce off anything and as it gets darker i will not have a quick on the fly method of adjusting the off camera strobe, i will have to take a break from shooting at that point.

any suggestions on how to get a good looking image for an outdoor dance floor at night are welcome. i really need suggestions so i can practice before then

I set power on my strobes so that I get a reading of 1/200 f2.8 ISO800 in the middle of the dance floor. You can either eye ball it by having someone stand and shoot a few frames or invest in a light meter.

As you mentioned, for outdoors, since you don't have a bounce surface, you might want to invest in a bounce card of some sort.

Off camera flash direct at subject target area at 1/32. ISO 1600 or so. Adjust aperture to set flash exposure, shutter to set ambient exposure.