Lessons from the Shot: Lighting a Conference Room by Stanley Leary

 

by Stanley Leary

 
 
Figure 1
 
 
When the ISO needs to stay low I will often light a conference room. A few years ago I owned the Nikon D2X camera.  This camera most people felt comfortable shooting up to ISO 800 with little noise, but above that was a concern.
 
While I could have shot these photos with the room light, there are a few things you would have to take into consideration. First of all mixed lighting. While the lights in the room with fluorescent, the room also had a large window where some daylight was spilling in.
 
For me the easiest solution was to over power the room lights just a little and clean up the color.
 
I put the lights down to 1/8 power to insure they would all fire. I didn't want to put a radio remote on every light. I have a PocketWizard Plus II receiver on one light, while triggering it with the PocketWizard Plus II transmitter. If I put the lights all the way to the lowest setting sometimes they do not always fire.
 
I was pleased overall with the results.  Good skins tones and colors throughout the photo. This was important because I wanted to show the diversity in the classroom. If not careful, some of the people would have been just a silhouette rather than seeing the skin tones.