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Family gathering- photos with 300 faces

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Born1948

Born1948

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Around every 10th year we have big family gatherings. Next time will most likely be in summer 2027. So if you find this type of photography interesting I would like to discuss:

A. How should people be standing (sitting for the old and some kids)?

B. 35 mm or 50 mm lens for FF digital camera?

The ground is a grass lawn and the photographer will be on a sky lift so the camera is around 3½ m above the ground. If the distance to the center of front line is 20m 35mm will give a width of 20.56m and 50mm a width of 14.44m
 
Remember that you want to use as much of the frame as possible.

If you give out 4x6 prints, you can use the full frame, but if you give out 8x10 prints, you'll need to cut and inch of the frame (which would fill an 10x12 space.

So plan ahead, and leave some extra space around the people. to be safe.

35mm or 50mm depends in large part on how far back you can get. I'd preffffor 50mm and also leaving some space around the edges because edges are always the softest and most distorted parts.

And once I got up on the platform, I'd shoot a minute or two or three panning video and stopping and zooming in and out of video, and lots of closer-in groups. And still of these smaller groups. Even 50 people out of a group of 300 makes the faces in each sub-section pretty small.

Decide well in advance whether you want to attempt to keep individual families togeteher, or let them go wherever they want

Decide if you'll roll in wheel chairs with people in them or walk the people in and sit them in prearraged chairs.

BAK
 
BAK CDN said:
Remember that you want to use as much of the frame as possible.

If you give out 4x6 prints, you can use the full frame, but if you give out 8x10 prints, you'll need to cut and inch of the frame (which would fill an 10x12 space.

So plan ahead, and leave some extra space around the people. to be safe.

35mm or 50mm depends in large part on how far back you can get. I'd preffffor 50mm and also leaving some space around the edges because edges are always the softest and most distorted parts.

And once I got up on the platform, I'd shoot a minute or two or three panning video and stopping and zooming in and out of video, and lots of closer-in groups. And still of these smaller groups. Even 50 people out of a group of 300 makes the faces in each sub-section pretty small.

Decide well in advance whether you want to attempt to keep individual families togeteher, or let them go wherever they want

Decide if you'll roll in wheel chairs with people in them or walk the people in and sit them in prearraged chairs.

BAK
Click to expand...
Thank you for your advice!

If I put people in a square it is easy to fill the frame. But faces in the last line will be very small compared to faces in the first line. So some kind of rectangle must be used...

The effect of the lift (with the photographer) is better with 35mm than 50mm lens.
 
[ATTACH alt="Canon 5D II, EF 35mm f/2, 1/160S, f/11, ISO 160. Four 300 Ws strobes with std. 7" reflectors."]3706306[/ATTACH]
Canon 5D II, EF 35mm f/2, 1/160S, f/11, ISO 160. Four 300 Ws strobes with std. 7" reflectors.

Before shooting this, I had marked the corners of the trapeze, within which the guests should stand, on the floor. I encouraged all guests to stand uncomfortably close to each other to maximise pixels per person. At f/11, DoF is sufficient.

With the camera on a tripod, I had the advantage of a microphone and a PA system, so I could direct them.

I took a series of shots with a few second intervals, so that I could transplant heads from different pictures onto the one were the fewest were hidden behind others.

This was seven years ago, I have since doubled the available Mp count in my camera.
 

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Thank you Klaus!

A very fine image. I hope we don´t need strobes. Normally it is on a sunny day but you never can tell.....
 
Strobes on a sunny day help with shadows. They are more important than on a slightly overcast day.

BAK
 
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