Tips for group photos in not-so-bright conditions?

Hey all,


I'm back mooching again for more help

A friend of mine's birthday is tomorrow/tonight. He's having a party and asked me would I take a group photo of everyone there. I told him I didn't want to and explained that I'd be fairly uncomfortable doing it and that I've never photographed people before (all true).

He kept banging on about it and I agreed for the sake of it.

So anyway, I was wondering if anyone has any practical advice here?

I'll have two cameras (I always carry both, keeps me from walking lopsided), an Olympus E-420 (which will have it's 14-42 kit lens) and a Canon 20D (which will be using the Canon 50mm 1.8), and I have a Metz 48AF-1 flash gun that's made for the Olympus (but seems to work fine on the Canon, anyway).

The place is a large enough function room I believe. I've never been there before, but I assume piss-poor lighting will be a given.

I've had the flash gun for a few months but never actually really used it, so I'm completely lost regarding that.



My approach was going to be; Aperture Priority with an f/stop of 11-16 (depending on if there's one or two rows of people), spot metering (off someone's face), ISO of 400-800 and flash gun set to 2nd curtain and TTL.

Was going to go with Auto White Balance and shoot RAW+Jpeg.

Does that seem OK? Am I overlooking something obvious?

Also, may i ask, what height should I be when photographing people? I'm usually on one knee when taking photos (as I say, i don't photograph people) but I imagine this would distort the body? Should my lens be at eye-level?


Thanks in advance to any able to help out here. Just a bit lost and although I'm assuming the worst, group photography isn't something that's gonna come my way very often, so I'd like to try and get something half decent.

Ricky91t

I haven't read through all of this but use your olympus, It'll have a much wider field of view compared to the 50mm, And will make your life easier, Take a few test shots first of people wandering around and make sure you're pretty confident the flash is going to expose everything fairly well(you'll be able to tell from the test shots) and shoot in raw!

Then, Get the group together, Make sure it's early, get someone you know and who everyone else will know to arrange the photo and get everyone in the one place, You can then order people around once they're all in the one spot.

I really can't stress how important it is to get it shot early, before people are drunk.

I shot a farewell party last year and left it far to late and this was the result:


People not looking the right way, blinking, falling over in some of the photos so I took as many as I could and this was the best.

Have fun though

Thanks a lot for the reply Ricky.


Turns out in the end I didn't have to do the group shot. Everyone was too drunk and it was kinda forgotten (and I sure as hell wasn't gonna remind anyone!). Did have to take a few other photos of people and I'm happy to be able to say that a lot of the photos are crap, but I know why, so I'm learning a little bit.


Surprised at how well my flash gun held up. Recycling times between flashes was really minimal. I could fire off four of five flashes in a row (burst shooting) and after that, I'd have to wait about one second between flashes.

Also surprised at the batteries not dying. Would really love to hang around a few spacious pubs or such places taking people's photos to get it down a bit better. Had a good laugh and enjoyed it.


Also, Ricky, aside from the odd hidden head in the photo you posted, i think that's actually a terrific group shot. Nice and clear and not the usual "everyone side-by-side" kinda shot. Very creative. Well done.