How can I improve flash lighting in a large room with dark ceilings and colored walls?

Question

I regularly photograph conferences in a long room with a black moderately reflective ceiling, dark floor, one wooden wall, and several yellow walls. Ambient light is weak and mixed: small ceiling lamps plus tungsten stage lights. At roughly 24mm, I need around 1/80–1/125s to stop motion, and often f/4–f/5.6 for groups and visible backgrounds. Without flash, ISO 6400 is still about 1–2 stops underexposed.

My current approach is an on-camera flash angled partly toward the subject with a large bounce card, and multiple off-camera flashes for group shots. I sometimes use a CTO gel near the tungsten-lit stage. The results are usable, but I still see noise, flat light, and limited improvement to facial shadows because the ceiling and walls are poor bounce surfaces.

In a room like this, is there a better lighting approach than bouncing a hotshoe flash, or should I rely mostly on ambient light and post-processing?

user37321 · Answer

No. Do not try to illuminate the room using a flash.

The way you are taking photos is not bad at all, it probably needs some white balance. The only thing you can do is either get a better performing camera in dark situations or to reduce the noise using software like "Neat image".

Another two programs I think make a good job removing noise are Dxo and Topaz labs.

Here is a before and after removing noise. I used the whiteboard as the noise sample, but you can profile the specific noise of your camera at your specific ISO.

This kind of scenarios must use the ambient light.

Shoot on Manual Mode and decide what is the minimum speed you are willing to take. You can easily go for 1/60 or 1/50 as you are shooting on a wide angle lens, even without a tripod. And it is not like people are running after a ball. You can have a bit less noise there.

For the white balance, it is difficult to tell, but as always... shot in Raw.

Take a measure of a white piece of paper under direct light of the main lamps, where people are sitting, and use it as a reference. Of course, you can use a Macbeth color card if you have some more time, or as you use that room often.

You also can develop a "flavor" and apply it to all the photos of that room.

Try to brighten up the scene a bit, probably lifting the gamma to around 1.2 or lifting the shadows only and remove a bit of green using curves.

Using a flash will put you in more trouble than it solves.

You will have a different white balance that you need to correct on location, using gels on your flash.

And also you will have an overexposed zone that will decay rapidly. Making the flash too obvious. This a "worst-case scenario" for the inverse square law.

The only moment you need flashes on that situation is to take a direct portrait of someone on that room and keep the flash as dim as possible, depending on the real intensity of the light on the room. Try to use it as a fill light to reduce any unwanted direct light of one spot on the ceiling.

Some diffusion on that flash would be nice.*

* Regarding the diffuser, you are using... I would not relly on acrylic. Synthetic white materials tend to have some color tint, normally magenta-ish or purple-ish color. You need to measure it, but I rather prefer paper or white painted material.

On some different room, with higher ceilings (really higher, like a church) and a neutral tint on it, firing a flash to it might give you one more step of light, either to reduce the ISO or the shutter speed. I would use it for the shutter speed.

How can I improve flash lighting in a large room with dark ceilings and colored walls?

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