School Dance

bucsheat

I have been asked to take photos for the Valentine's school dance. I have a red backdrop and a smaller wooden prop. I have 2 cowboys studio lights with 300 watts bulbs and the umbrellas. I have the 18-55mm, 55-200mm and 50mm f/1.8 lens. Which should I use? Any settings would be appreciated as well. Thanks in advance.

ohyeahar

Sounds like this is a photo booth setup where people pose in front of the backdrop?

In terms of focal length, I would use either 50mm or 85mm or anything in between. It depends on how much space you have.

Are you going to handhold the camera or leave it on a tripod? Handholding gives you more freedom and makes operating the camera easier, but having it mounted will give each of your shots some level of consistency in terms of framing. If you can handhold the camera and still frame each shot consistently, then even better. If handholding, I’d go with the 50mm prime just because it’s lighter than the others.

Given that you’re going to be photographing groups and they probably want the backdrop to be in focus, you’re going to want to stop down a bit; probably anything between f/5.6 to f/8.

Since these types of shots are probably not going to be pixel-peeped, I’d bump the ISO liberally to keep shutter speeds high (around 1/200). Even printed at 4x6, nobody is going to complain about an ISO3200 shot.

I don’t believe the difficulty here is getting your exposure right. It’s positioning your lights. I would suggest just googling for “how to position studio lights” to get a better understanding.

bucsheat

Hello @OHYEAHAR and thanks for responding and the info. I have all the room I need and I'll hit up YouTube for lighting. I just got the 50mm f/1.8g lens and I'm planning to purchase the cheat cards for that lens from Moose. I'll test both lenses before the shoot and I'm excited to use the 50mm. Thank you again.