# When taken a group picture of roughly 30 people, what to do about lighting?



## Spenz (Jan 17, 2012)

Hey, iam about to start a small business, where iam about to take a lot of group photos and iam not sure what kind of lighting is optimum. The photos are going to be shot in a room of about 50-100 m^2. So iam not sure of what equipment to use.      

Questions need answering  

Studio Flash - how many - How many watts?
Softbox vs. umbrella?
Paper Background vs. fabric background?
Other things needed?

What do you think? 

Looking forward to your reply  thanks in advance.


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## Derrel (Jan 17, 2012)

Here's an old concept: take ONE light source and position it high up, like 10 to 13 feet...perhaps even higher if you can get it higher off the ground safely. There is only one sun. Only one light can make a very nice group photo. AIm it so that the shadows of those in front drop down pretty steeply, and do not fall on the face of those in the second and third rows.

How many Watt-seconds is your studio flash unit? From 400 Watt-seconds up to 2,400 Watt-seconds ought to be about right. You are shooting in a VERY large room: I would not use an umbrella or a softbox: I would use a single parabolic reflector with about a 50 to 65 degree beam spread, depending on which studio flash system you have; this is going to be an 11-inch to about a 20-inch "bowl-shaped" reflector.

A group of 30 people is not going to fit too well on standard paper...how about using the actual ROOM they are in as the setting???

If you really,really want to do a LOT of group photos and want the optimum light system for group photos, the LiteLight system with its flat reflectors have been designed to function well for group and large team photos.

here is what their light head looks like:  DSCN0059ed2D.jpg


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## Spenz (Jan 17, 2012)

Thanks alot for the reply ! 

Seems easy enough. 

But iam still open for other suggestions so just spam, so i can scan the marked for different ideas


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