Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Hello All,

I will be shooting a 24 member cheer squad's team picture tomorrow and have a few questions. I have 2 86" PLM v2's with two Einsteins plus an AB400. My plan is to use a single PLM and Einstien in the front and use the second Einstein placed behind the girls to blowout the rear wall. The gym has white walls and my guess is if I set the flash in the back at full power, I should be able to blow out the background. My question is I know the silver PLM's can be used to focus the light by moving it in and out in relation to the flash. What will moving the white PLM in and out the length of the rod in relation to the flash do? I plan on shooting through the PLM versus bouncing off of it. I also have the black outer cover and a PLM front diffuser fabric to play with as well. This picture will be blown up to a 4' x 5' picture. The gym is very well lit with 330 florescent bulbs with a cooler temp of 4100k. I will do a custom white balance also. I am using a Canon 50D with a 24-70 2.8L lens as well. I plan on setting the camera at F8 with a 1/125 sec shutter and ISO to suit.
How would you set up this shoot?
Thanks

There''s a lot of ways to skin a cat and this is only a suggestion without seeing your location.

I'd put both the E640/PLMs upfront and cross light them.
AB400 in the back will probably not blow out ALL of the rear wall. You might just put it a ways behind them and rim the back row.
I think you're going to need more than f/8 to get the depth of field for a group 3 rows deep. 6 in the front. 8 in the 2nd row and 10 in the back. I'd try for f/16 or better



Just a thought...

Thanks Ziv,

I just did some testing in my garage and with the PLM on stand about 2 feet off the floor, the PLM is just huge. The lighting it throws off is wonderful. Just as a test, I took off the PLM and did the same shot there were a lot of harsh shadows which I knew there would be. It just shows how great the PLM is. Was a little worried hanging it from the Einstein though as it does tend to sag a little. I'm using the mount that takes the place of the reflector. I used it with the Lithium Mini's and those little buggers are great!

I might suggest placing the PLMs up and behind the camera and pointing them straight forward into the group to avoid cross shadows?

Rob Galbraith did this on a whole football team with great results, but I couldn't find the blog post.

Here it is...

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-10046-10396

Thanks so much . . I looked all over for this link.