How to light a room with dark walls and high dark ceilings

steelbluesleepr wrote in post #16526946
Just get over this feeling, I used to feel the same way. Unless you plan on blowing these images up for very big prints, noise with a mk2 isn't really an issue until MUCH higher in the ISO range. Lightroom can do amazing things with noise reduction, as well.

This is a dark-ish room, your settings should reflect that rather than constricting yourself with some arbitrary ISO limit.

Ya no kidding. It wouldn't matter if I was on my 7D/60D or my 6D now for a room like that if there was only artificial light then I'd probably immediately shoot at F2-3.2 max and keep ISO around 3200 and use the flash to mix well. Gel it to match the artificial light.

SunTsu wrote in post #16526927
Weird...I didn't get my instant thread notifications.
Thank you for the feedback. Are you thinking light stands for the corners? And are you thinking of pointing directly into the room from each corner? One of the challenges is the room is not square so some corners won't point to some parts of the room.
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Yes, either stands, cold-shoe feet or clamps to get them up in the corners. Then point them to the center of the room regardless of how rectangular the room is. You can try using the flashes' built-in diffuser to spread the light or set them to manually focus the beam by setting them to 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, etc.

ceiling isn't too high. bounce up and ISO. I have no problem with 1600. 3200 and I start losing stuff, but will keep exposure to the right to avoid the black banding.

I'd set them up in all 4 corners with soft boxes and max em out. Then adjust through camera. 5th on real low as fill on a bracket.

steelbluesleepr wrote in post #16526946
Just get over this feeling, I used to feel the same way. Unless you plan on blowing these images up for very big prints, noise with a mk2 isn't really an issue until MUCH higher in the ISO range. Lightroom can do amazing things with noise reduction, as well.

This is a dark-ish room, your settings should reflect that rather than constricting yourself with some arbitrary ISO limit.

I wouldn't say the ISO is an arbitrary limit. It's more what I want to tolerate. My interest is if I can overcome using high ISOs. IMO, if light can be controlled or augmented, then it should be. Cranking up the ISO, IMO, should only be used if you either can't afford the lights or don't want to bother.

Down_Shift wrote in post #16528173
ceiling isn't too high. bounce up and ISO. I have no problem with 1600. 3200 and I start losing stuff, but will keep exposure to the right to avoid the black banding.

I'd set them up in all 4 corners with soft boxes and max em out. Then adjust through camera. 5th on real low as fill on a bracket.

I took much of your advice and used light stands high in the corners but didn't use softboxes. One of my problems is that the 600EX overheated fairly easy because of the output I was asking from them. I had another shooter tapping into the slaves and had CP-E4s on every one of the flashes.

I also brought an Einstein and put it where the activities and cake cutting would occur. I shot the Einstein through a 4 foot umbrella, but next time I'm going to use a 7 foot as there is a lot of space.

I also tried to shoot the right when possible because the dark walls were causing banding issues.