HELP! Shooting in a mirrored reception hall!

Ok, in november I had this wedding in a place that seems popular for weddings and receptions. Anyway, the reception hall was pretty small for the amount of people in it, was very dark and on top of that .... had mirrors on the side walls and on the ceiling above the dance floor.

Here to get a better picture:

You walk in the door, to the right and straight are tables cramped along a mirrored wall.

Middle dance floor where above is a giant chandelie (with hardly any light on) and around that a big mirror.

To the left table for b&g including wedding party, behind them a large window front.

Next to the door, dark area for just the table with presents and a bar

It was clear that flash was needed to get proper exposed pictures, but there was the problem. Bouncing didnt work at all with the mirrors and straight on flash.. well you know about that!

I ended up going without flash most of the time and doing heavy processing to fix them but wasnt happy at all.

I have a wedding next spring int he same place and need to figure out how to do this better. Bringing strobes was my first thought.. but isnt there still the same mirror issue then?
If you say strobes.. then why and which ones do you recommend.

If anything else, please explain!!

Sounds like a tough one....

What I would do is see if the venue would allow me to show up and practice on afternoon or weekend. Then you could try a bunch of different things to see what would work the best.

Maybe even rent the new 50mm 1.2L...but I'm not sure when it comes out.

The other option would be to see if there is anything they can do to make the room brighter? Maybe have some portable ambient lights for the reception?

I have a 50mm 1.8 thats as wide I want to go in aperture anyway (even too wide).. anything wider is only good for portraits .. not for a group at the reception.

Mirrored walls or rooms really throw off your ETTL in a bad way. I think you're only choice with your 580 is to set it to manual and shoot direct to get the right amount of light.
As for the glare, I dunno. I would treat it as if you're shooting with an off camera flash straight across from you and make sure there is something/person between you and the facing wall. I've shot a wedding on a yacht that was all mirrored panels & glass, and that's all I could do. I found myself holding my camera up and pointing it down alot as well as getting low when people where sitting so the flash didn't go past them.

softbox to spread and soften the light?
a point source is going to be a headache with mirrors.

Sounds like the ideal situation for an off camera flash, with fill from the on camera flash. With all those mirrors it should trigger ok, but you might have to move it around a bit.

You could use a couple of assistants with hand held reflectors standing just out of the shot with a couple of slave flashes fired wirelessly from floor level bouncing up to the reflectors. This should give you enough light as well as keeping the flash from reflecting back at the camera.

I am with STRMRDR, Would a flash based soft box work?
You may also "set up" a corner or different room were strobes could be set up for some guest formals and other pictures. You want to give B&G some pictures and this may be able to add to the images. At least you can control this aspect of the lighting!! You could get B&G cake shot and a lot of family/friends. Maybe work a couple different backdrops to vary background....just a thought.

Another simple idea might be bouncing the flash off the ceiling, using the wide panel diffuser to spread the light out a bit. I've tried using mirrors as diffusers before, they really need to be diffused if possible.

Tim, dont forget that there is a gigantic mirror on the ceiling too. There wasnt much regular ceiling left, what was there was above the tables that were were close together.

I did try to bounce flash off the celing when I was in a area where I had a bit of it but I dont know what this was made of, but it didnt work well at all. It was too dark to really make out the color of it, I think it was an off white.. should have worked but didnt.
I am a little stressed at the thought of shooting there again in the spring

Go in and try things out beforehand. I did mean to try bouncing the flash off the mirror on the roof with the diffuser panel of your flash down.

thanks for the tips, I will be doing lots of reading and hopefully I can get in there to try things out at one point before the next wedding

GARY FONG lightsphere.....i will show you some pics i took from a place with MANY MIRRORS In the ceiling...not too good , but not too bad..

and the simple one...go direct with your speedlite, no bouncing, just direct...or also you can use a pocket bouncer from lumiquest, a good option.

As goforphoto said - all you need is an assistant to hold a reflecter and bounce sideways.