I know not a lot but if i were to do an outside shoot in daylight with a group of people with everything I need then. I would have two big bright lights in front off the subjects and the sun would just be an added backlight.. I'm probs ten thousand miles out but hey at least I had a stab at it! I did read additional lighting is a must for great group pictures even outdoors in full sun.
All I do know is if I take a portrait of Jamie with the sun behind him his ears glow red, would the lights solve this problem? Maybe if I used a red light he would match his ears instead lol
I would shoot in Auto so that my on-camera flash would take care of any stubborn dark spots. Just spray and pray. Surely one or two of them will come out right, out of sheer dumb luck. And I'll shoot in RAW, so I can fix everything in post.
I'd set my camera to expose for how i want my background to look then use my light meter in front of the subjects to know where my flashes need to be for a good exposure on the group and fire away.
The secret is to darken the background as much as you can while exposing the subjects. To do this I used portal studio strobes.
The stand was facing me with the sun directly behind.
I setup up two 60 inch umbrellas at around 45 degrees to the left and right fronts.
In these I put a Elinchrom Ranger Quadra and set these at full power.
Now that I have my lights in place I turned my camera to manual so I could under expose the background as much as I could, so I set my shutter speed at 1/200. I can not go any faster than this using these strobes, The problem is that as it had full sun the background was still not dark enough. To get around this I put on a Neutral Density filter to darken the image my 3 stops. I also wanted to blur the background to get good separation and the ND filter assists in being able to do this.
I then adjusted my F focal length so that it would expose the subjects correctly while still having the rows of people in focus. I think I ended out with a F 8.
I did this a little but arse about and would not normally do it in the order, but my major concern was making the background as dark as I could.
Now my actual response to the the question that was asked as this:
Family member: "Isn't the sun going to be a problem taking a photo of a group of people?"
The great part about this setup is while I like the families to take their own photo of the teams, it makes it very hard for them as they dont have flash to complete with the really bright back lighting, so they are more likely going to purchase from me. ;-)
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I must say I love the answers/comments. ;-)
Here is what I did.
The secret is to darken the background as much as you can while exposing the subjects. To do this I used portal studio strobes.
The stand was facing me with the sun directly behind.
I setup up two 60 inch umbrellas at around 45 degrees to the left and right fronts.
In these I put a Elinchrom Ranger Quadra and set these at full power.
Now that I have my lights in place I turned my camera to manual so I could under expose the background as much as I could, so I set my shutter speed at 1/200. I can not go any faster than this using these strobes, The problem is that as it had full sun the background was still not dark enough. To get around this I put on a Neutral Density filter to darken the image my 3 stops. I also wanted to blur the background to get good separation and the ND filter assists in being able to do this.
I then adjusted my F focal length so that it would expose the subjects correctly while still having the rows of people in focus. I think I ended out with a F 8.
I did this a little but arse about and would not normally do it in the order, but my major concern was making the background as dark as I could.
Now my actual response to the the question that was asked as this:
Family member: "Isn't the sun going to be a problem taking a photo of a group of people?"
Me: "Not if you have some big light!"