LF Ambient indoor light portraiture

Have any of you LF shooters done any indoor portraiture using ambient light? I am thinking of using LF to shoot my aunt and uncle who are celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary this next weekend.

I would really like to be able to make some nice sized pt/pd contact prints of the couple and the occasion.

I typically would use a film like Delta 3200 to shoot this, however, that is not available in sheet film size. I have HP5+ (which I have used extensively) and TMax 400 (which I have not used very much) available to me. I am planning to shoot with the whole plate format (6.5 x 8.5 in.).

The celebration will be in a room in a church, probably lit by fluorescent lights.

I usually shoot HP5+ at ISO 400. I don't have much experience with shooting at different ISO values, esp. with LF.

Would I be better off just shooting with medium format and use the Delta 3200 which I have used successfully indoors for portraiture?

Diane, if you are confined to an indoor
setting with overhead fluorescent light,
a whole-plate camera is going to be
tough to shoot. You will end up with a
slow shutter and a wide aperture, making
you doubly vulnerable to soft negatives
(movement and thin DOF). Were it me,
I would stick to MF for the indoor shots.
But if you can set up the camera outside,
on the north side of the church, you should
have plenty of light for the whole plate work.

If you want some extra speed, you could get about one stop or possibly two from a speed developer like Acufine, Microphen, or since you want to print pt/pd, you might try RAF metol-pyro, which I've posted the formula for in the "Staining Developers" section of Chemical Recipes.

Typical indoor lighting will give you about 1/30 sec. at f:2.8 at ISO 400, so if you bump it up to ISO 800, figure 1/2 sec. at f:11 and with a fairly tight double portrait on whole plate figure 1/2 stop for bellows factor, so that gives you f:9 or thereabouts (don't extend the time, or you'll have to add reciprocity). DOF will be thin, so use a string to check focus before firing the shutter and figure about 8 shots to make sure you've got a keeper in there.

If the lighting is flat, you can increase development time as well, which will increase contrast and give you a little more speed.

If you've got some window light somewhere in the church, it will probably be one or two stops brighter than the fluorescents and will be more interesting light, or you could go outside, as Sanders suggests.

hi diane

i have had great success shooting portraits with a large format camera ( 5x7 and 4x5 ) with mostly ambient light.
granted the format is smaller than full plate, but still ...
i use a shuttered lens that has a flash sync, and shoot at about 30th S with the flash. depending on the distance between
my subject and the camera, i have used 50ws, 100ws, 200ws for the burst of light ( lumedyne).
i have also used a little flash that goes on a 35mm camera but with the pc cord attached to the shutter.
usually the flash has a modifier on it ( tupperware lid or tracing paper ) so it diffuses the light a bit.
i tend to focus, and stand to the side of the camera and have my arm out holding the flash.
i do a few different things - bounce the flash off the ceiling, or a wall ( if they are close enough and white )
or i point it directly at the subject. it isn't a ton of light, but it is enough to work.

i know it isn't totally ambient light, but sometimes a tiny bit of flash
goes a long way.

I assume you are shooting posed portraits on a tripod as opposed to handheld press camera stuff. If so, I'd say shutter speeds of 1/4 or even 1/2 a sec should be okay for people to hold still. At f5.6 @ 1/4 @ EI 400 you are looking at around LV 5. Should be more than enough for most indoor situations.

David: the party is not until after 6 pm (I think) and I just found out that there aren't any windows. I have been developing my film with Pyrocat-HD.

John: I might have to dig out the 35 mm flash and the sync cord and play with it tonight.

Anupam: Yes, it would be a tripod mounted camera. However, the majority of my lenses are f/9. I have a couple at f/6.8 and an ancient one which is f/4.5 but in a compound shutter with an air bulb release (the lens is usable though).

I just spoke to my mom and my other consideration may be the size of the crowd (which I hadn't previously thought about). The party is supposed to be in a fairly large room.