Family portrait, first time using OCF. Opinions please?

At the weekend I shot a friends family get-together as it was his mother-in-laws 70th birthday. They were staying in a swish hotel for a couple of nights and I met them to take a family portrait. This was my first time using off camera flash in a formal setting so I took some time before hand to get my measurements and calculations sorted before the people arrived.

Framing is deliberately wide to get as much of the hotel in as possible.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …thrrutherford/8​064570572/

Was the light diffused at all? It looks a little harsh. Not to mention the hard edged shadows. Maybe get another flash and put them on either side.

It was 2 flashes one either side of the camera, from posting in the lighting section I've been told the flashes were too far apart and too low.

I've still got my training wheels on with OCF, and I'm trying to learn from others on here who have more experience in this kind of thing.

light looks harsh

Had you upped your ISO setting, you would have gotten much more of the building/hotel in the image. A mistake I've made more than once!

dave

Thanks Dave, I was already at ISO 800 and didn't want to push it much higher to be honest, but I'll remember the tip for next time

You mentioned that you wanted to get as much of the hotel in as possible. Shooting it as you did, you ended up not getting much of it at all, in the sense that what is showing is too dark to see. (On my monitor anyway.) Shutter speed affects the amount of ambient light in the screen when shooting flash, while aperture affects flash. What I would have done is taken both the camera and flash into manual mode, and exposed first for the background, and then adjusted the strength of the flash (1/4 power, 1/2 power, whatever) until you got a pleasing result on the people. Had you been shooting earlier in the day when there was more ambient light available to "light up" the hotel, it would have been much easier. But when you are trying to balance low light and flash without the background going too dark, you have to understand how your flash works in those situations. Read up about "dragging the shutter", you might find that helpful as well. I'm not sure where you are in your photography journey, but what you were trying to do in shooting people and a background like that in low light is difficult if you don't know all the ways to get around the problems. (lighting the background separately, for example, or shooting manual as I described.) Maybe you can bring up the background in photoshop? Still, the fact that you have all the family together in one shot makes it special, technicalities aside!

Thanks Sue, I was shooting at 1/100 and with the kids moving a fair bit I didn't want to go much slower for fear of not getting a sharp shot of them. I understand how shutter speed affects the ambient exposure but the light was fading really fast and the family were taking their time in all coming down to the front of the hotel which didn't help. I'm currently playing with this in PS to see where I can get to with it without it getting too noisy.

Have a read of this from the Strobist blog.. I think this technique would do the trick just fine.

http://strobist.blogsp​ot.ca …ncing-light-twilight.html

Thanks Reibs, that should help get my head around things