how would you guys light this?

i have been asked to take pictures at a farewell dinner
went to check out the location today
it is a pub setting with less than optimal lighting in the day much less in the night
the event starts around 5.30pm so i will have a mix of late evening and night light
except for the large windows the venue is covered with wood paneling and has low wooden ceilings so bounce flash is not an option
i,m thinking of placing two 580ex2 flashes on light stands aimed directly at the tables either at points A or points X and also using a hotshoe 580ex as fill in ettl:the ocf flashes will be on manual triggered by cybersyncs
i would like to to bounce the on camera flash but not sure if this is wise with the absence of a suitable bouce surface
any suggestions would be most welcome

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Direct cross flash, like I suggest here. This assumes the head table is what's important, which I think is a reasonable guess since there are no other tables in the room...

If there are other tables in the room, and you need to be able to get a photo of anyone, anywhere in the room.... bounce flash, and either make all the images black and white or hope you can adjust the WB to get the color right. In my experience the color's really bad once bounced off wood.

If you REALLY need to take photos of anyone, anywhere in the room, i'd set up about a dozen radio slaved flashes, pointed pretty much all over. It'd be ugly though. Or you could try high ISO and ambient, but I rarely like that, the light tends to be ugly.

thanks tim
there will be several rows of tables and i suspect atleast 50 people
i am hoping that people will go to the head table area to give tributes and speeches but i do suspect that i will need to take photos away from the head table area

I would agree with Tim about bouncing off wood...I tried it once (thank goodness I only shot a few pics this way) white balance could not be fixed in PP. They were an awful very orange colour. With some fiddling I did turn those shots to black and white with quite good results.
Maybe a practice shoot before if possible will give you a beter idea what is needed. good luck

I've bounced my on-camera 580 off low wooden ceilings. Once I set my WB right it worked quite well for me. It will use more power, so shoot at higher ISO and smaller apertures to preserve power. I would probably try to bounce the slave flashes, hitting the ceiling about 10ft infront of the head table. If it still robs too much power, then I'd fire it direct.

I would have to agree with Lloyd. If you can get it close in camera by setting a Manual WB, then you should have enough room to fix in post.

If you are really worried about it, try a few different set ups, and you are likely to get soem useable pictures. Also set their expectation to look for a lot of black and white photos, as it captures the mood much better in these sort of situation and you can focus on the emotion rather than the color. Sure, that sounds convincing.

After white balancing my flash-off-wood images they were ok, but they were never great. Go back to the venue with a friend and try it, bounce flash, no white card, ISO100 F8 or whatever your flash can manage, just to negate ambient.