Over on my tech pager, there has been an exhaustive analysis of my school ball planning.

Getting lucky last year with a minimum of kit, this year I have an embarrassment of options and the strongest intentions of getting something better.

The issues last year were;

• A bad backdrop wall (same pink as fake tan, commonly found at end of winter balls)

• Stray up lights overpowering my set-up.

• A shortage of reliable battery power, making recycle times, reliability of output and enough power for the whole night, real issues. I went through 24 “photo” alkaline’s.

• A flash that went to sleep a lot reducing my options from 3 to 2.

Wins for the night were my 40” brollies, my 2 YN560 IV flash units (the mk III overheated) and my little EM10 Mk2 that went the distance as my studio shot camera, while the EM1 did candids and entrance shots.

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Lots of planning, re-planning (see tech page) and over thinking and this is how it went.

Originally determined to try the actual room as background (putting myself in a corner shooting into a large open area), giving me more room, especially for large groups, I quickly gave up trying to fight the ever changing colours and consistency.

The backdrop became black velvet curtains, which picked up light spill as silver highlights against deep black and complimented the theme (Venetian Masquerade), perfectly. They looked like theatre curtains, so I used them as such. These curtains were apparently there last year, just drawn in behind the stage.

In the test shots below, the gentle, plush shimmer proved ideal as contrast and texture, without causing any issues. The masks were handy allowing me to use a student and teacher “incognito”. As the night went on, I adjusted the lighting to deal with larger groups and to improve coverage. In this image, the fill and hair lights were about a stop low. The hair light would have been better on the opposite side (facing the main light, sharing the shadows with the fill), but a stack of speakers resided there, just out of frame.

Skin tones were natural and clothing popped out. The cross light-hair light combo separated everyone well enough for a little post to perfect, unlike the moveable feast of last year.

My light set-up ended up being;

• 1x YN 560 unit* in a feathered 4’ soft box as main, running at about 1/4 to 1/8th power.

• 1x YN 560 unit* opposite side and lower as fill from a reflective brolly at 1/8 to 1/16th power.

• 1x 660 LED as hair light, which just enough to help find brunettes against black.

• 1x Godox 860 and 685* for arrival (direct TTL, sometimes high speed sync) and dance/room candids (flagged for high-ceiling bounce at 1/4 power). This will be better thought out next year.

I tried a blue gelled wall light, but it added nothing. I also toyed with dual lights in the soft box, but went with one and it worked fine. In hindsight, a spot light effect on the curtains might have been good, but too risky at the time and useless for groups.

I requested the up-lights be removed from my area, problem fixed.

The only lighting issue** I had was the on-going one of the YN’s defaulting to 80mm zoom because I was forgetting to change it wth the transmitter setting, not just the flash head itself.

I changed no batteries all night!

The Godox 860 needed a rest from over heating (I assume after 200+ 1/4 power shots in under half an hour on the dance floor***), so I switched to the 685. It and all the other units went the night with charge to spare and no noticeable drop off in recycle time or output. The monster lithium in the 860 was still half charged next day and it seemed fine after a short rest. This changed my mind on getting a second 860, as the 685 performed nearly as well.

The 2 NP 970’s ran all night at 75% power on the 660 LED (full yellow, half white) and would likely still be going on the next day. Next time I will just use one 970 or the 550 batts. This means I can set up long term multi light LED rigs without fear of constant battery or unit changes.

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So the moral of this little tale.

Plan for lots of different eventualities, but not so you can or will rigidly stick to any one of them. Plan to be open minded, using what you have in any way needed to get the job done.

Plan…..to be versatile.

*running on Eneloop pro batts.

** room was my other issue, but that was out of my hands.

***The big advantage of M43 for this type of work is the added depth of field you gain, allowing a wider aperture than larger formats, effectively adding 2 stops of power to your flashes. I can shoot at F2-2.8, at 1/4 power and ISO 400 with a high ceiling to bounce off where a full frame camera would need f4-5.6 and ISO 1600 or 1/2 to full flash power. The beauty of it is, I can choose what to stretch when I need even more grunt, rather than everything. Or maybe the camera with grip was playing up. I have had it checked with no fault found, but very occasionally the grip disables the main shutter button until turned of.