Group of 20+ indoor shooting lighting advice

A very good friend of mine like me to do some poster shots for his dance crew (20+ people). The location will be in a library. I am a complete beginner of flash lighting shooter. As I like to give my friend a hand and at same time I like to get my flash lighting photography going through this task. So, I really really need a lot of help from your experts.

What I have:
1 580EX II, 1 430EX, a reflector, 1 begon light stand, 1 reflector stand, 2 43" umbrella

Bottom line:
I am convinced all my investment in lighting gears so far will do little for this task. I might need to move on those Alien Bee strobe setting in order to get close to complete the project. And you can see that I have none of those and little knowledge how strobe works.

Questions:

1. If you were me, besides quitting, where will you start? what is the purchase you are going to make in order to make the shoot possible. I am saving up for a 200mm f/2, so the moderate investment (towards minimum budget) is preferable. Certainly those investment on gears should be as portable as possible and as re-usable as possible for my future development on lighting photography.

2. After recommending me the gear list, I really like to know how the set up will look like for a group of 20+. I appreciate if it can be as detail as possible...

3. Technically, I have no clue on strobes if that set up is recommended. i.e. how to trigger the strobes, using a PC cord, a canon flash... The alien bee website doesn't really give me much information on how to use their stuff, but i am open to lean though

Your input is absolutely priceless for a lighting newbie like me. I thank you all in advance.

rent some lights, you can trigger them with one of your flashes on manual 1/128th (doesnt really matter what setting just low) Just make sure everybody is visible.

To do it with the gear you have break the group into smaller groups and shoot against a plain background and put together in photoshop. That way at least you wont need to buy anything else?

Here's an article that should be helpful:
http://super.nova.org …s/Photographing​Groups.pdf

Galaxy99 wrote in post #5709438
What I have:
1 580EX II, 1 430EX, a reflector, 1 begon light stand, 1 reflector stand, 2 43" umbrella

From experience, that should be enough, as long as you have a wide-angle lens in the 17-25mm range. I've covered areas of the type you'd be using with two Sunpak 383's bouncing off 30-inch umbrellas.

Borderfox wrote in post #5710227
rent some lights, you can trigger them with one of your flashes on manual 1/128th (doesnt really matter what setting just low) Just make sure everybody is visible.

To do it with the gear you have break the group into smaller groups and shoot against a plain background and put together in photoshop. That way at least you wont need to buy anything else?

I thought of renting, but I lean towards making some sort of investment for the project and for the future too. I don't have the photoshop skills to combine pictures without being notice on lighting and other stuff...

Curtis N wrote:
Here's an article that should be helpful:
http://super.nova.org/​DPR/Groups/Pho...hingG​roups.pdf

Thanks, Curtis. I am reading.

Really? Well, the widest lens I have is a 24-70 on a 1.3 crop body. 20+ people in a library will need a lot of lighting to cover each face... and I don't have a trigger to fire 580 EX off camera to umbrella as it has to be on the body to trigger the 430EX... I was thinking only a powerful softbox can do this task, maybe even two...

I'd look at an Alien Bee Ring Light, if you check their forum there is a topic where a Zeus was used outdoors to light a very large group.
For your equipment I'd sell the 430 and pick up a (forgive me the dirty workd)Nikon SB800 to use as a second off camera light. Besides the manual setting of your 580 EX II it will slave (with the right menu setting) off any other flash (not TTL though). The SB800 is something like $100 cheaper than a 580 EX II

Jack

Galaxy99 wrote in post #5711680
I don't have a trigger to fire 580 EX off camera to umbrella as it has to be on the body to trigger the 430EX... I was thinking only a powerful softbox can do this task, maybe even two...

Suggestions that could work: put both flashes and umbrellas on stands. Set them to discharge at full power. Get some sync cables, a three-way adapter and a couple of hot shoe adapters and use that connection to trigger the flashes using a shoe adapter on the SLR. Variation on the Sunpak 383 setup.

Or you could get a couple of the (overpriced?) Canon off-shoe cords and use those to get one of the flashes off the camera's shoe and onto a stand, and you could use that flash as the master in your setup. Unfortunately, cables for the Canon flash system are far more expensive than the plain old-fashioned Paramount-style sync cables that would work with some Sunpaks or Vivitars.

The Canon system's pre-flash may rule out another option, of getting a couple of inexpensive slave triggers and using them to discharge the Canon flashes through the on-camera built-in flash.