Need Suggestions for Tough Assignment

OK, everyone. I need some suggestions. I've just been invited to take pictures of a retirement reception.....in prison. Don't worry, I work there. One of our nurses is retiring, and they've asked me to photograph the event. It seems that, because I've only showed them my best work, they think all my pictures turn out fabulously. So now I have to take great shots of nurses in sky-blue uniforms, with drab prison walls as backgrounds, only overhead fluorescent lighting (no windows at all) and very limited equipment. I'll only be allowed to bring in my Rebel XTI, 540EZ flash and maybe a tripod. I'll have my Tamron 17-50mm lens as well as my Canon 70-200mm f/4 L.

Don't be shy. How can I make this work?

The only advise I can give is bounce the flash if at all possible. Preferably off the ceiling if it's low enough. Also shoot in RAW. It's easier to fix the WB and exposuer. Hopefully there'll be others can give you better advice than I can.

Art

Yup, bounce your flash, or better yet buy or make yourself a bounce card. I don't know how you usually shoot with a flash, but I would slow the shutter speed down to 1/60 ish when using the tamron so you have some ambient light and not that overly flashed look. If you are feeling overly ambitious gel your flash to match the fluorescent lights. Like Art said, shoot raw and make critical white balance adjustments in post processing.

Since fluorescent lighting tends to give a greenish tint to your photos (if I recall, correctly), you may benefit from purchasing a simple 18% gray card. This will help you get a good color balance setting in post processing.

Another little thing you can do in post processing is to lightly burn the background to help draw the attention to your subject. If you wish, you could also dodge your subject, lightly, to give the subject a little more pop.

That's all I have. Everything above what I said is good advice, as well.

I think you'll do just fine. Best of luck and just have fun with it!

1. Use ISO 400 or more.
2. Shoot in Raw.
3. Shoot an 18% gray card first for perfect color balance later.
4. These are reception photos not works of art. I doubt they will want 16 x 20s of any of them to hang over the fireplace so KISS.

Benji

KISS and BW

Go Raw and bounce the flash as already stated. That is just going to be tough due to the environment. You will have to use your imagination.

Try to get there early or find an area you can take some test shots to get an idea of how to go with things.

Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions, everyone. I do always shoot in RAW, and I have a 10ft flash cord + an Omni-Bounce diffuser for the flash, so that should help. What about posing, though? It's a small space, so I doubt my 70-200mm will be very useful except for a head shot. Any thoughts on posing the nurses? I really appreciate the comments so far, so anything else would be helpful.

I moved this to TALK as you don't have an image to share yet.

Hope people here can help.

From a lighting perspective, you're pretty lucky. You basically have one type of lighting to worry about, since there are no windows. Let me explain why this is good for your situation.

Fluorescent lighting is pretty nasty, because it gives people that nice greenish cast. However, since it's the only source of light, you can color correct your flash to match with a gel, and setting the appropriate white balance in your camera.

Given that not all fluorescent lighting is made equal, I would start with a 30cc (color correction) green gel with your camera white balance set to fluorescent and go from there. Some fluorescent lights are more orange than others, so if your flash and your ambient doesn't match up, try using a cto gel instead.

The gray card is a great suggestion, but if the ambient and the flash colors don't match up, your bg will look odd compared to the fill light created by the flash.

For the other aspects of the shoot, we'll assume it's a small room, so the tamron 17-50 2.8 is probably going to be more useful than your 70-200 f4

Thanks for all the thoughts. I'll just do the best with what I have. I think Benji's right, they will probably be thrilled just having shots without red eye. Maybe I can get the retiring nurse to step outside after the reception for a portrait shot.

I would also suggest renting (or buying) a fast lens like 50 1.4 or 85 1.8 but you look like you're pretty set equipment wise. And definitely use a gray card!