Here is my entry for the fifth strobist bootcamp assignment. You can read about my entry for the 1st assignment here, for the 2nd assignment here, for the 3rd assignment here, and for the fourth assignment here. I was quite pleased with the results this time around. The shot’s story from my flicker post to the strobist group can be found at the bottom:

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I had some time to do this assignment and decided to try and get it done in advance so that I might actually have a chance to modify or re-shoot if necessary. My photographer friend Ross came over to help me figure out the best way to shoot this. I had thought of either shooting the dining room or living room, and decided on trying to shoot the living room and highlight the two grand pianos.

Getting both grand pianos in the picture, the scene properly lit, and no funky distracting shadows turned out to be impossible. We decided to go to plan B and shoot the living room and back into the dining room. While this wouldn’t feature the two grand pianos, this was much easier as there were no harsh reflections or shadows to tame.

We setup one Canon 580EX clamped to the curtain above the flowers. This was pointing down onto the flowers to the right. Another Canon 580EX was set on top of a book shelf in the dining room just out of frame to camera left. It was bounced off the ceiling illuminating the dining room. A third Canon 580EX was fired into a silver Westcott 2002 umbrella to camera left and high up on a stand on a table. The umbrella was pointed at the couch and table to illuminate the overall scene. You can see the overall setup in these two shots:

My final exposure settings were 28mm f/6.3 1/30s at ISO 640.

Here is the origonal unlit shot, followed by the final shot:

Technical Details:
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Digital
Lens: Canon 24-105 F/4.0 L IS USM
Memory Card: Ritek Pro-2 8GB
Wireless Device (x4): Pocket Wizard Plus II
Flash(x3): Canon Speedlite 580EX
Umbrella: Westcott 2002 Silver
All images shot in RAW
Used Adobe Camera RAW to convert to JPG

Many thanks to my buddy Ross,

-Andy
http://www.andrewstrauss.net