VIDEO : Bert shoots an 800 People Group Shot
Last week I had to make a corporate group shot for one of my favorite clients. Nothing special except for the fact that I had 800 people in the picture and the room was full of technical challenges.
This is not the most creative picture, but I thought it would be interesting to some of you to see how such an assignment goes.
Video quality isn’t great but this is filmed during a real assignment in very low light.
LIME012 - Bert makes an 800 People Group Shot - by Bert Stephani from squeezethelime.com on Vimeo.
In case you can’t play the video, you can also see it on YouTube.
It may be much more fun to watch a shoot with a sexy model, but I hope you’ll find the corporate stuff interesting too.
EDIT: Since I received so many questions about using a fisheye lens for this shot, I added some answers to those questions:
Here is the image after it received some micro adjustments in Lightroom:
The distortion of a fisheye lens can be very distracting but here it’s not that bad. The curve in the stage and in the ceiling allows to use other similar lines. By keeping the audience close to the middle of the frame (horizontally), the distortion is further minimized. After all, the closer you come to a fisheye, the more distortion you are going to get.
Removing some of the distortion in Photoshop isn’t that hard, but I had very little time to post process this image. They needed 800 20×30cm prints by 6am, the next day. That’s why I did some research on “defishing” photoshop plugins the week before the shoot. I tried a few and found a rather unknown (at least to me) plugin that gave me great results with this kind of pictures. It’s called the Fisheye Hemi plugin by Image Trends. It’s specifically made to remove distortion in fisheye shots of people, and it works remarkably well and easy.
Then it was just a matter of cropping, cleaning up the ceiling, remove the reflection in the back (reflection of one of the flashes), and some other small retouches, before we had the final image:
A bigger version, can be found here.
very very well done. thats a hell of a challenge.
two questions:
when you need to cover a deep area with a relatively wide aperture where do you place your focus point?
did you “de-fisheye” the shot with post processing or is that just in the way its cropped? if its PP that could be a handy
trick for your readers should they ever find themselves in that situation.
thanks,
JT
very very well done. thats a hell of a challenge.
two questions:
when you need to cover a deep area with a relatively wide aperture where do you place your focus point?
did you “de-fisheye” the shot with post processing or is that just in the way its cropped? if its PP that could be a handy
trick for your readers should they ever find themselves in that situation.
thanks,
JT
Very interesting Bert. I really like the final result!!
Ps: Did you rent the Rangers or are they yours ?
Damn, that’s one big crowd.
I really liked the final results. As other has mentioned, did you de-fisheye the picture? Is was actually so wide I thought it was a panorama at first.
Nice done!!
Gee, my filming talents are rather embarrassing, I warned you
Now that’s a challenge!!!
Very well done, simple and efficient.
By the way, is that a new guinness record for group shots?
Very interesting! Wich lens have you used?
Wow, that turned out much better then I thought it would!
Great instructional video anyway. Keep it comming! (:
Wow Bert, that final shot is amazing. That’d make a great cover for a corporate brochure etc. I’d also be interested in your pp of the fisheye. I never thought it was possible to de-fisheye it that much!
Thanks for another cool video!
Interesting session to see!
The filming is fine, Ake.
Bert (and Ake), according to the end result you did a wonderful job! Thanks for sharing!
I enjoy seeing your versatility as a photographer. Great job Bert!
Really interesting to see how you tackled this and it shows that you are a true professional.
I had no idea that the ‘Rangers’ are so powerful, and its fascinating to see some ’studio’ lighting being used in an on location shoot.
I learn so much from your site - thanks so much for sharing!
did you check out the place a few days before the shoot? What would you’ve done in case your lens wasn’t wide enough? Would you consider stitching multiple shots?
I’m impressed, nice job!
Great shot.
If you weren’t able to bounce the light off the ceiling because it was black instead of white, what could you have done instead with the light setup for such a large group?
Cheers!
Great! I ask me if you spend a lot of time to correct the light, and work on this picture.
The result looks amazing (even if a bit small on the video).
Nice and interesting movie with a great shot to finish it all ! Thanks for sharing.
Seriously impressive.
very nice endresult !
@ Dave : if the ceiling was black, Bert should use this special wide reflector
nice work
well done Bert and everyone else involved thats a hell of a challenge and again thanks for showing us how you did keep it coming.
@Electronick: LOL
great work, excellent result and a very nice and interesting “making of” video.
thank you for sharing and taking the time to put together these pieces.
btw, how much effort does it cost you to make these videos? I mean, there is enough stress already in such a big shoot…
Excellent work! I am very impressed at the use of 2 Elinchroms! I use Elinchrom myself and absolutely love them!!
Thank you for sharing this. I am going to bookmark the page so I can refer to it in the future!
Well done Bert. Fantastic shot. As in previous posts, I would like to know where the focus point was and also the approach you would have taken if the cieling was not white. How long did it take you to position the lights?
Once again, fabulous shot. Well done!
You pulled of this mad assignment really well. A ‘thinking photographer’ like you can tackle just about any problem. Kudos!
there were not 800 ppl in that room! Probably the half … which still makes this a challenge ! congrats
This is simply amazing.
I’m not a fan of group shots either but it’s good to find articles like this.
Thanks Bert
Great job Bert!
nice work!
Fantastic work Bert!
You could have maybe rented a 14mm ? Although listening to your latest podcast with the section about clients and budgets I can see why you may have not wanted to rent one, along with anything else you had to rent/buy for the job already.
Whoa, dude! 800 people, you say? Nice one.
[...] ?????Squeeze the Lime Tagged as: iso, ??, ??, ????, ??, ?? ??????? ???? [...]
Nicely done, thanks for the post
Why fish eye? IMO would more properly have been two shots spliced in the middle.
There’s nothing in the middle to argue against a two shot splice.
Easier post processing, less distortion than fish eye, less BS in the foreground.
Longer focal length (two shots, maybe @ 35mm) would have brought the distant people forward, distinguishing their faces from grains of sand.
Shooting from a ladder or other platform, especially if it was nearer the front of the stage would have eliminated the undesirable foreground and given legs and feet to the front row of people.
@djon
You could do it that way too. It comes down to your style and how much time you have to take the shot, process it and send it to the client.
A single shot is more of a film technique, but if you only have 5 minutes to get 800 people in your shot then it’s worth using the W/A to get a couple ’safe’ shots then switch to a 35 or 50 and get 2 or 3 shots to try splice in post (time permitting).
I believe that Canon also make a corrected 14mm which doesn’t fisheye. Not cheap though
CW
Helluva feat ..
But one question: Why in post-processing did you delete the 4th light from the ceiling? I can see a shadow of it’s existence in the picture ..
For symmetry sake wouldn’t it be best to keep it in the frame or delete all the others? Just curious ..
-Justin
Hey, I crossed my eyes, I still don’t see all 800 people, where could they be hiding?
Simply wow
Great shot !
Bert, dat heb je knap gedaan. Mijn petje af.
Mvg Jasmine
cool!!!
Great shot, very impressive. How did you even the light out in the ceiling????
800 people….a quick count reveals it is closer to 400. not trying to be negative or anything but I just saw this and noticed that it was no where near 800 people
Whoa!!! 800 people! I had a recent corporate group shot of around 100 people and I thought I had a big problem. This is simply awesome. Thanks for posting.
[...] See the finished shot here. [...]
really wonder….i too have tried many shots in available light having only on camera flash bounced from ceiling in meeting halls….and my 28mm covered well….thanks Bert.
The postprocessing was a fast one as you mentioned, but why total picture lighting correction?
If you partionally lightenup the center(darker part) and then the total your get a more equal result. Imo: Sides and sealing are too bright even the color of the side panels are pinky, compared to the center panels, they should be equal.
Just my imo.
[...] 70 man - hoe belichten kijk hier eens: http://bertstephani.com/2009/01/26/b…p-a-groupshot/ http://www.squeezethelime.com/video-…le-group-shot/ kan je al een eindje mee verder __________________ [...]