Shooting a funeral. Advice needed.

T

thundermonkey

New member
Hi all, I am not a photographer, or least wouldn't consider myself one yet. I offered to shoot a funeral for free even though I was offered money since it would be my first time. I have a 60D, 18-135 lens and a 50mm 1.4.

Is there any advice that can be offered? I am going to be borrowing a flash, which I assume will be a 580 exII. I was thinking about shooting in Av mode, and bouncing the flash where possible, if not off the ceiling, off a piece of paper or card. I have only ever shot with an external flash maybe twice, so it is still pretty new to me.


One thing I am unsure about is exposure compensation and if I should use that at all.

Thanks!
 
I personally don't find on flash bounce cards or on flash "diffusers" usefull. The idea of bouncing off of a wall is to turn the wall into a large (and subsequently diffused) light source that isn't necessarily head on. A bounce card isn't going to make your light source much bigger at all so the quality of light it produces isn't going to be any more diffused only less powerful and maybe wider. Controlling light with cards is another story. If you're shooting in a very large room like a large church 580ex isn't going to be powerful enough to bounce off of walls unfortunately. If you do decide to bounce flash, then you will want to make sure the flash is fully bouncing and isn't also hitting your subject directly on.

I personally have never shot a funeral but would think that you want to keep things as simple as possible so you can stay a fly on the wall. A gig is not the time to start playing around with equipment or workflows you aren't familiar with. My recommendation would be to stick with what comes second naturely to you, shoot with the 50 1.4 in low light and don't be afraid of raising your ISO if you need it.

On camera flash tips:

When shooting ETTL flash you should be shooting in manual mode on your camera. The reason for this is that ETTL is essentially an auto mode for your flash. Once you start introducing two automatic variables, you loose controll of what the camera will decide to do in order to obtain a proper exposure. If shooting on camera flash, I recommend shooting in manual mode on your camera and ETTl on your flash. You don't typically want to shoot with manual power settings when you are shooting on camera flash because your distance to the subject is going to effect how much light your subject is getting hit with.

Flash exposure compensation is the ability to tell the flash (through the camera) that you want the flash to output more or less power than the ETTL system decides it wants to produce a properly exposed photograph. This is the equivalent of regular exposure compensation that you would use if shooting in AV mode without a flash. If you shoot a white wall your camera automatically wants to lower the exposure to 50% grey. Exposure compensation would tell the camera that you would like to raise the overall exposure since the wall is truly white and not grey. Flash exposure compensation is used in a similar fashion. The flash might output too much in order to achieve a middle exposure causing your subjects face to be blown out, lowering flash exposure compensation will lower the power level of the flash and allow you to expose for the face rather than for the image as a whole.

You will want to make sure you balance ambient light with your flash rather than letting your flash do all the work. Do this by underexposing the room by 1-2 stops and then setting your flash to ETTL to compensate for the rest of the exposure. Lastly, you will want to use a 3200K warming gel on your flash if you are shooting under tungsten lights so that you don't wind up with very mixed white balances.

Hope this helps. Good Luck!
 
Thanks so much for the help. Now, however, it turns out they want video, so I will have to take this information into account for future work. Thank you!
 
I know you are shooting stills, but I want to share this piece of short video of a funeral for a relative I attended a month ago in California so maybe it will give you ideas on the subject matter to shoot. I'm basically an advertising and corporate video producer but back in the 80's and early 90's in my home country I shot events and funerals was among them.

Personally I prefer not to shoot the deceased in the casket as I would prefer to leave the family and friends with images in their minds of the deceased when he/she was still alive.

This short video is shot with a 5d mkII using existing light and I just gave this to the family as a free gift after the funeral.
Hope this helps;

 
I also want to be as unobtrusive as possible so i made sure I carried a simple setup, no rigs and all. So bare 5D with my diy finder and manual nikkors. Mostly shot with 50mm f1.4.

This was a 2 day thing, viewing and funeral mass compressed to a short film.

Hope that helps.
 
Oh, what Nikkors are you using? I am in the market for new lenses, and vintage has been something I am toying with. Would you rather go used or brand new? Going to watch the video you posted right now.
 
The video is lovely. I hope they appreciated you doing that. I had not thought of doing it in this way, mainly because what they have now said they want is basically straight up coverage of everything from beginning to end. Focus will be on the ceremony and the people, so I decided to get a friend to help me shoot cutaways of people with the main Sony cam on whoever is speaking/reading at the time.

Did you scan in the pictures you used?

Considering I never did a funeral, and the people I am doing it for are close, I am really not charging them much of anything to do this, though they are willing to pay.
 
We have a very old studio back in the Phil. so I carried over old manual lenses to my canons, 50mm, 85mm, 105mm, 80-200mm nikkors and even, mamiya 645 lenses which I adapted for f-mount and eos.

For video use vintage manual lenses are ok.
 
I noticed some vibrations in the video. Did you try to do stabilization in post? Some footage looked like some AE Warp Stablizer was used. I see you didn't mention using any Tripod, so I guess you were all handheld.

Now I am really considering being able to move as unobtrusively as I can.
 
thundermonkey said:
I noticed some vibrations in the video. Did you try to do stabilization in post? Some footage looked like some AE Warp Stablizer was used. I see you didn't mention using any Tripod, so I guess you were all handheld.

Now I am really considering being able to move as unobtrusively as I can.
Click to expand...

yes, I used post prod stabilization, I carried a very small tripod just for the church so I can use the 80-200 f2.8 which is heavy. Other than those I just hand held it using the finder to press against my head for stability. Shot it in 30p so i can subtle-y slow it down to 24p in post.
 
Well thanks so much for showing me. As I mentioned though, they want something more along the lines of start to finish, with shots of the crowd. I may be a bit more obtrusive since I will have to record audio as well. Thanks, Ted!
 
If the budget allows, you might want to rent some fast lenses so that you can shoot without flash as much as you can. The 50 1.4 is very good but maybe add a 70-200IS 2.8 or a 135L 2.0 (which will be about 216mm on your crop camera). That latter is what I've used for indoor sports to great effect. Since people won't be knocking pucks into a net you should have no problem shooting in lower light situations without a flash and without having to resort to crazy ISO's. Use a monopod and/or a tripod to help stabilize at longer focal lengths. A wide like the 16-35mm would be nice, too, or even the cheaper 17-40mm--which has a fixed f4 aperture and nice sharp optics compared to your kit lens. Bouncing flash is good when you have low enough ceilings and walls close by but a big add on reflector can help when you have high ceilings and are shooting close. I wouldn't go for the Gary Fong thing but more like the largest sized Rogue Flashbender. You can also DIY something out of foam core. Flash mods don't really work beyond a few feet. It would help to have somebody hold a collapsible reflector for you to bounce off of when shooting a wider area.
 
Shooting a Funeral is an odd one. I've never heard of it, mainly because it seems like something people don't want to remember all that much.

Here's my 2 pence.

If I were asked to film a Funeral (I would turn it down out of principle), I would take it much like a wedding shoot. You never want to be intrusive, but at the same time, you also want to get what you need. It's much more acceptable to be intrusive at a wedding, especially if you're having a laugh and a joke with the guests. You don't have that option at a funeral. A small rig would do quite nicely if you can afford it, especially if you're shooting on a 50mm;

http://jag35.com/products/shoulderigs/newsrunner.html
http://jag35.com/products/shoulderigs/streetrunner.html

I'd also suggest not focusing on faces. People don't want to see people grieving.

Finally, don't do it in Black & White. Far too cliche!

:')
 
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