Our photography club is going to have an annual Christmas banquet. What is more appropriate I thought than taking a “banquet” photo of a photo club banquet?
The room is 90’ x 30’ and everyone will be sitting at round tables. There will be about 100 people in the room.
My plan is to use my 8x10 camera set to vertical format on a tall tripod (so I can get everyone’s face without a lot of stage direction) , Tmax and a bunch of flash bulbs that I have been hording. (If not now when?)
I will have to use 1/30th of a second on my 250mm Protar as the shutter has been upgraded and I don’t have M sinc. Vertically it gives me about a 44 degree angle of view which looks about right to catch most of the room if I point the camera into the room at about a 45 degree angle. (I want to position the left edge of the frame so that the flash fixtures are just out of the field of view.)
Note: the Protar is a convertable to about 400 but I don't think that will work or that I can tilt enough to keep everyone in focus at that focal length.
At 1/30th Press 40s have a guide number of 320 and Press 25s a guide number of 280. I plan on stringing 6 flash holders down one long side of the room and shooting from a corner in one end of the room to the other end 90’ away. Even with that much light it looks like I will be at F16 and d.o.f. won’t “feed the bull dog”, so I expect to have to tilt the front till I run out of lens and then accept distortion by tilting the back.
A 6” reflector gives a 120 degree angle with a press 40 and I am planning on using reflectors pointed into the room at about the same angle as the camera.
I have a flash meter and 4x5 Polaroid holder but at the price of bulbs I don’t want to make a lot of test exposures. Besides which making a fool out of yourself in front of people that don’t understand photography is one thing but in front of a group of very good amateurs and some retired professionals is something else. Beyond, which at 1/30th I expect to have to shout, “hold it” every time and people will get tired of that quickly.
I am wanting everything I use (except the flash meter) to be reasonably circa 1940 as I want to demonstrate what could be done before pixels.
I will (if it works) probably get a drum scan and make a 4’ x 5’ print made digitally unless I can find someone with optical capability to enlarge an 8x10 negative to that size without taking out a mortgage.
Questions:
Should I space my bulbs evenly every 20’ from the camera or should I place them progressively closer as I get farther from the camera, say 30’, 15’, 10’ 8’ 5’…
Should I try to bounce some light off the ceiling or just keep them level?
Do I need light on the other side of the room (in which case the fixtures will be black round balls in the picture) or can I get away with all of them on one side?
How much do you think I can tilt the back before people start looking like political cartoons? I am assuming I am going to have to just about lay my focal plane down on top of the tables and 100 year old protars don’t have that much image circle.
Is this a “fools rush in” project??
Other comments?
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