Tips for family portrait in front of lit Xmas tree?

[postmark]

Going to be doing the family Christmas card soon and we want to have it in front of the tree. How do we do this with good lighting while not making the tree appear flat? Any ideas? I have access to 2 speed lights plus 1 constant light source. Shooting with a DSLR.

 

[Berliner]

Any light modifiers?

I would do a normal setup with one main light to the right, one fill from the left and put the lights very low and raise your ISO to get the tree lights in.

 

[gevorg]

How do we do this with good lighting while not making the tree appear flat?

Maybe shallow DOF to bring out the Christmas lights like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chewychua/301664391/

 

[Paladin3]

You can do it with a single flash on camera if you are careful. Just bounce it off the wall above, behind, and/or to the side of you and that will give you nice, soft lighting. The key is to balance the flash with the existing light you already have in the room and the lights you have on the tree. Make use of a slow shutter speed and tripod if necessary.

Think of your strobe as the fill light, with the existing light and tree as the main. Expose so the tree looks great, then use the flash to properly expose your family. Since you are inside, you will probably have a nice wall behind, above and to the side of you. Bounce your speedlight off of that like it's a huge umbrella to light up those smiling holiday faces. Drag the shutter to brighten up the lights on the tree.

Assuming it's the average dim indoor lighting, start at something like 1/15th, f5.6 @ iso 400ish. Play with the flash exposure compensation if necessary, but the more light you blast on your family, the longer the exposure should be so you pick up the lights on the tree.

Shooting Christmas trees is sometimes tough if it's too dark in the room, because all you get is a dark blob with bright lights on it. Sometimes you needs some flash on it as well to lighten up the dark spots, but you can't use too much or you drown out the lights.

And don't forget about the color temp of all the various lights you are mixing. I'd worry most about setting the white balance for color of what you are lighting the people with. That should be daylight/flash balance light from the strobe, plus whatever color it picks up from the wall/ceiling you are bouncing it off of. You might have to trial and error it by manually adjusting the WB a bit.

Sorry, kinda rambling right now, hope I'm making sense.

 

[iGas]

Meter for the background lighting, or take test shots with ISO-400 to ISO-1600 in shutter priority at 1/60s or 1/30s if your subject can stay still other wise shoot at 1/125s.

Set the flash to -1/2 to -1 power once you determine what shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. Then set your camera to shutter priority (at the correct background tested shutter speed) and shoot at +1 1/2 brightness on camera setting.

Or, the old school method (the way that I have shot for the last 25+ years) in manual mode for the correct background shutter and aperture then shoot with flash at -1/2 power, full flash power will also work.

 

[slashbinslashbash]

I tried this a few years back. Did not get satisfactory results. Christmas lights are lless than 1W each, i.e. super dim. To get any kind of nice glow/bokeh from the lights, you will pretty much need to eliminate anything on the order of a Speedlight. Either that, or REALLY drag your shutter, like f/16 to knock down the speedlights, and 1 second exposure to get decent light from the Xmas lights. I tried doing this, but we were doing it with a dog that wouldn't hold still, so the best-exposed shot ended up being blurry due to movement.

Maybe set up a few hand-held flashlights or something. I think if I were to do it again, I would take one photo of the tree by itself to get the glow+bokeh, then overlay it with the photo of the family in front of the tree. All from a tripod of course, to keep everything in the same place.

Single portraits like the one gevorg posted are easy enough with the right modifiers to keep the light from bouncing around to the tree. Group portraits are much harder because the area to be lit is so much larger. And if you get your subjects far enough away from the tree to make the lights appear OOF, the tree looks tiny in the distance. Again, not hard to handle with a single-person head-and-shoulders portrait, but when you are trying to do multiple people, head to toe, it's just not really possible unless your tree is huge.

Part of my issue was that I was working with studio strobes (AlienBees B800) which are quite a bit more powerful than speedlites. Even at their lowest setting they could easily overpower the tree lights. I ended up with my best results by adding a couple of ND filters over the strobe to knock down its power, as well as a yellow filter to mimic fire-light, and barndoors to "beam" the light in one direction. I just placed my wife in front of the tree with the single strobe to the side, with her facing into the strobe. Still, that evening was an exercise in frustration. I'll see if I can dig up some of the photos.

 

[iGas]

I tried this a few years back. Did not get satisfactory results. Christmas lights are lless than 1W each, i.e. super dim. To get any kind of nice glow/bokeh from the lights, you will pretty much need to eliminate anything on the order of a Speedlight. Either that, or REALLY drag your shutter, like f/16 to knock down the speedlights, and 1 second exposure to get decent light from the Xmas lights. I tried doing this, but we were doing it with a dog that wouldn't hold still, so the best-exposed shot ended up being blurry due to movement.

Maybe set up a few hand-held flashlights or something. I think if I were to do it again, I would take one photo of the tree by itself to get the glow+bokeh, then overlay it with the photo of the family in front of the tree. All from a tripod of course, to keep everything in the same place.

Single portraits like the one gevorg posted are easy enough with the right modifiers to keep the light from bouncing around to the tree. Group portraits are much harder because the area to be lit is so much larger. And if you get your subjects far enough away from the tree to make the lights appear OOF, the tree looks tiny in the distance. Again, not hard to handle with a single-person head-and-shoulders portrait, but when you are trying to do multiple people, head to toe, it's just not really possible unless your tree is huge.

Part of my issue was that I was working with studio strobes (AlienBees B800) which are quite a bit more powerful than speedlites. Even at their lowest setting they could easily overpower the tree lights. I ended up with my best results by adding a couple of ND filters over the strobe to knock down its power, as well as a yellow filter to mimic fire-light, and barndoors to "beam" the light in one direction. I just placed my wife in front of the tree with the single strobe to the side, with her facing into the strobe. Still, that evening was an exercise in frustration. I'll see if I can dig up some of the photos.

ETTL & TTL flashes should be able to calculate the distance vs. power and cut down the flash power to the appropriate strength for your need. Most speedlights will also have manual power setting, of 1 (full power), 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, and the better speedlights will also have 1/128 & 1/256 power setting (that mean you have between 6 to 8 stops of control or an equivalent of f1.0 at 1/256 power is equal to f16 at full power).

You can decrease shutter speed to as low as 1/30s to allow more light for ambient light if the subject remain still, and the flash will stop the rest of the motion.

Using the chart provided below, at EV 5 to 6 indicates that you will need 1/8s to 1/15s at ISO-100 and f2 aperture. Hence, you will need to increase the ISO to 200 with f2 to balance the exposure at 1/30s (it will be correct exposure to under exposed by 1/2 stop at ISO 200 with f2 at 1/30s + flash set to match background light).

You will need to bump the ISO to 400 with f4 at 1/30s, or ISO-800 with f5.6 at 1/30s.

Personally I would shoot with a 50mm or 35mm prime for indoor set at f2 for the beautiful bokeh lighting and shoot at 1/60s to help with stop motion and ISO-400, and TTL flash set at full power or +1/2 (in this case the background is not so important as the lights hence the background can be underexpose a bit, perhaps 1 stop background under expose will be okay).

 

[postmark]

Thanks for the info so far guys! I'll have to play around with this in a few weeks when we get the tree up.

 

[KeithP]

Take pictures of the background and people separately, put them together in PhotoShop.

-KeithP

 

[SecurityTheatre]

As was said, the trick to balancing flash with ambient is to meter the scene without the flash (making sure the lights show up), and then use a good TTL flash to fill in the remainder (without changing the settings).

Leave the camera settings alone once you like the way the christmas lights look and play with the flash exposure compensation until you get the flash lighting you like to fill in the remainder.

I suggest doing this at night in a moderately lit room. Your flash will be firing probably at minimal power settings, but as long as the TTL works ok, you should be able to get a gentle enough flash to make it work.

 

[Paladin3]

As was said, the trick to balancing flash with ambient is to meter the scene without the flash (making sure the lights show up), and then use a good TTL flash to fill in the remainder (without changing the settings).

Leave the camera settings alone once you like the way the christmas lights look and play with the flash exposure compensation until you get the flash lighting you like to fill in the remainder.

I suggest doing this at night in a moderately lit room. Your flash will be firing probably at minimal power settings, but as long as the TTL works ok, you should be able to get a gentle enough flash to make it work.

Best, most succinct reply so far.

 

[Gintaras]

Maybe you'd like to use 4, 6 or 8-Star filter:

 

[postmark]

Maybe you'd like to use 4, 6 or 8-Star filter:

Honestly that looks really cheesy and definitely not what I'm going for.

 

[shortylickens]

the shine looks nice on the tree, but I hate it in portraits.

 

[shortylickens]

Oh, and I think this may have been stated but aiming the flash straight up is better than using a diffuser.

 

[SecurityTheatre]

Maybe you'd like to use 4, 6 or 8-Star filter:

But then your portraits will look like they are from the 1970s! :-D