Informal group shoot lighting setup with LIMITED FIREPOWER

How about this?

Put the SB800 in manual mode, and the SB600 in SU4 mode.

Attach the Fong diffuser to your SB600, and put it on your tripod, raised to its highest level, to the left of the camera, positioned at 45 degrees to the person in the middle of your group of subjects. Aim the Fong-thingie directly at the subjects. That will be your main light. Set it at 1/2 power.

Put the sb800 on your camera's hotshoe. It will be the fill light. Use the ABBC on it, and set it at 1/4 power.

Take a test shot, check the histogram, and reset the flash power settings.

Repeat the above as many times as necessary, until the histogram and the review of the image show a well exposed product.

 

Sorry, I don't think the SB600 has an SU4 mode. Let's reset.

Use the SB800 in the hotshoe as the Commander. Put the ABBC on it, select manual mode, and set the power at 1/4. It will be the Commander and your fill flash.

Attach the Fong diffuser to your SB600, and put it on your tripod, raised to its highest level, to the left of the camera, positioned at 45 degrees to the person in the middle of your group of subjects. Put it in remote mode, and manual mode. It will be your main light. Set it at 1/2 power. Aim the Fong-thingie directly at the middle subject.

Take a test shot, check the histogram, and reset the flash power settings.

The zoom setting will be related to how much room you have to shoot the group, and how tightly you pack them. I wouldn't use anything wider than 28mm, to mnimize perspective distortion.

The aperture selection will be related too the level of ambient light in the room, and to your iso setting. Keep in mind that the tighter the aperture, the harder your flashes will have to work.

Your best answers will be from your test shots.

 

You might want to consider gelling your flashes. Your SB800 came with a set of gels, two of each I think. This will allow the ambient fluorescent to mix with the flash and not result in an ugly WB nightmare. Shoot in RAW.

I see no reason in keeping a flash on the D200 itself. If you the office space uses a drop ceiling, you can rig the flashes to hang from the ceiling supports with a little bit of wire.

You really need to have both flashes at 45 degree angles. Otherwise, one side will be darker than the other.

 

Practice with those gels first...so you can achieve the proper balance...also shoot RAW and set WB to Fluorescent, then adjust in a RAW converter.

 

If it makes you feel any better, an idiot (me) with one SB800 set on i-TTL, poor house lighting and a better bounce card took this shot of this huge group.

It's hardly a great photo but just gives you an idea of what the speedlights can do. All I did was fire the flash at the subjects with a homemade better bounce card flipped up for fill.

 

Here's a thread I started on a group shot...some good advice in there. The one piece of advice that I highly recommend, is set the WB for the lighting conditions.

 

Sam, your images seem dark. Did you use bounce flash. Share your shooting info with us.

 

Yeah, that was likely the culprit. Nice shots otherwise.

You don't want to raise the shutter speed if our images are too dark...that would darken them more. Just make sure to get a nice balance with the Aperture and SS. Too low of a shutter speed and you might get ghost trails...dont go much lower than 1/60.
The exposure you mentioned earlier was probably fine. Enough SS to stop motion and prevent camera shake, as well as a wide enough aperture to get ambient light in for the background. Try it again with no EV modifications and I think you'll be surprised. Also, shoot RAW..these two shots might have been salvageable if shot in RAW.