Something a bit different for the forum. As I mentioned earlier, I said I'd upload some of the photos I took from our Middle School's (we're still 3-tier, (First, Middle, High) in Northumberland) end of year, Year 8 prom. So 13 years old for the non-Brits.
Being an IT technie and not a photographer, these are lacking compared to what a pro or half-useful amateur could come up with, but I'm not disappointed with them. Only disappointment really was that Warehouse Express could only send out 1 of the backdrops, so I had to use an existing one for the floor, instead of having two 3x7m backdrops side-by-side (6m wide for group shots).
Note that my Dell 2408WFP is a nightmare to setup for accurate colour reproduction, so some of these are a little off in post-processing - they've been post-processed to suit Ilford Smooth Pearl paper, as we allow parents to order shots. I did most of them in a frantic hurry on Monday (trying to get the selection sheet out for the kids on Monday night) so I could print the ordered photos on Tuesday. You'll note the backdrop is sometimes a little on the dark/light/desaturated side, but frankly, it was the least of my worries. :P
Click for a 50% version, cropped.
People never seem to post their kit for such shoots, so I thought post mine, as I'd find it infinitely useful if more did. This is a budget kit if ever there was one, being a small, 135 kid school. The set up was a Nikon D40x with the kit 18.55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens (I'd have used my
Sigma 30mm F1.4 prime, but I needed to be able to zoom, and haven't replaced the kit lens yet. Tripod was a
Manfrotto MN055XPROB with
Manfrotto MN804RC2 head and a
Custom Bracket's CB Junior flash bracket to allow me to have the camera in portrait mode with the flash still above the camera rather than off to one side. The flash was connected to the camera via a
Nikon SC-29 TTL Remote Cord (as the bracket meant I couldn't have it connected directly to the hot-shoe). The main flash was a diffused
Nikon SB800 Speedlight, angled to bounce off the (very high) school hall ceiling, and it also wirelessly controlled two
SB600 Speedlights bounced off of two
Interfit umbrellas. Stobes would obviously have been ideal, but we/I didn't have that sort of money available to us/me. You can buy industrial work lights apparently, which cost a lot less than pro strobe lights, but it's not something I've considered yet. I also had a small 60cm umbrella (similar to
this one) which I placed at around 70 degrees to the subject to the subjects right, behind them to try to bounce some light back behind the subject - was more of an experiment than anything else, and didn't appear to work, but it lost me nothing.
The flashes and umbrellas were mounted via some
Kaiser-umbrella-holding-thingies-with-hot-shoe-connector on old, cheap tripods and a
Manfrotto MN682B monopod, which can use 3 legs (I use it for a stationary camera which filming the Christmas panto - it's got a hell of a lot more reach than any tripod I have).
Backdrop was a
Lastolite 3x7m tie-dyed sheet stretched and clothes-pegged across a washing line tied to two steel pegs normally used for a protective sheet for a bow-and-arrow club in our school hall... on the floor was the backdrop I used last year - a big blue sheet (approx 5x5m) used for draping the sides off on the stage in the school pantomime. It didn't match the backdrop, but was all I could manage. The intended set up was two of the Lastolite backdrops (they only delivered one) in 2x3m long by 7m deep (around 3m in height with the rest draped across the floor) suspended from a self made lighting stand (following
this guide), but the piping I got wasn't stiff enough to hold the heavy backdrop at the height needed. The clothes line trick worked well though, other than some slight sagging under the weight, and some creases we didn't have time to iron out.