How to make a good group photo | Aigarius Blog
Skip to main content
Taking a good group photo consists of multiple aspects:
hardware
scouting
organization
preparation
execution
processing
publishing
I can say with confidence that nearly everything here comes from having failed to do these things right<br>at least once, even on the latest attempts, so this is an ideal to reach towards, not something we expect to<br>hit every time.
The Goal
The main goal of a big event group photo is capture both the moment itself and each individual person inside<br>that moment.
We want people, who were not there to see all the people involved and get an impression of what<br>it was like being there. It needs to show the breadth and depth of people that make up this group, this project.
And we want people who were there to be able to look back the next week, the next year<br>or in ten years and remember - ah, yes, I was there, I was standing right there with this grin on my face next<br>to this wonderful person and I was feeling great.
Hardware
Based on the goal we want to have high level photographic gear that is able to capture both a broad enough picture<br>to encompass all the people and some of their surroundings to communicate the context (without undue distortions)<br>and to deliver enough detail and resolution so that faces and facial expressions and underlying feelings of every<br>single person in that group could be clearly seen and preserved.
To both capture the context and minimise distortion the final picture should be just a bit wider than normal human<br>field of view. That is about 50mm for a full-frame camera or 35mm for a typical 1.6 crop camera. You can go a bit<br>wider if there are no better alternatives (as detailed in the scouting section), but be prepared that corners<br>of the image will be distorted and not really usable (but we can fix that in processing step). Or you can go<br>to unusual aspect ratios, like we did in Debconf 10.
In the absence of a 100MP+ camera, you will need to be stitching together multiple frames to achieve resolution<br>high enough to have enough pixels-per-face to see emotions clearly. This means that the photos you will actually<br>be taking will be tighter than the overall field of view mentioned above. Still, a higher resolution camera body<br>is preferable - nowadays 24MP-32MP cameras APS-C provide a good compromise between resolution and price, but<br>45-67MP full-frame cameras also exist on the market. Assume that we will be shooting in a bright environment,<br>so most likely with quite low ISO settings, that means that high-ISO noise characteristics of more expensive<br>cameras will not really play a role here. You will also not need very fast burst modes, even manual speed of<br>one frame per second is sufficient.
You will also want to get as much detail as possible out of your lens, and this is the most important part.<br>You can do amazing work in all other steps of the process and have a great camera too, but if you pair it with<br>a lens that is not sharp, then the end result will be disappointing.
You want the lens that is sharpest corner-to-corner when stepped down to about f/8-f/11, that you can get for<br>your system. You also want that lens to be about 85mm full-size sensor or 50mm for 1.6 crop size. Luckily that kind of<br>range is also a great range for optical design and sharpest lenses are typically available in exactly these kinds<br>of sizes. You absolutely want to have a fixed focal length lens, not a zoom lens. Even profession grade zoom lenses<br>often deliver worse image quality compared to fixed lenses that cost less 1/10th of their price (when shooting in<br>the same focal length). Newer design lenses are better than older lenses - optical design, coatings and precision<br>manufacturing have advanced a lot over the decades. Retro look is great for mood, but not as good for actual<br>resolution and clarity. You don't need to overpay for most expensive lenses because those often only improve<br>image quality on lower F-stops. To encompass the whole group we will need to shoot at f/8 and in bright light,<br>so the extra benefits of those f/1.2-capable super expensive lenses will not come into play here.
We will have no use for a flash here. A tripod will be too restrictive when rapidly repositioning the camera between<br>different parts of the panorama shoot. But a monopod might help with stability - I have not tried that myself,<br>however.
For my last photos I used a Canon EOS R7 (32.5MP) with Canon RF 50mm f/1.8 STM lens and considering an upgrade<br>to Sigma 56mm f/1.4 DC DN for the next time.
Scouting
Scouting a good location for the group photo is another big chunk of a successful picture. The critical piece of<br>the puzzle is lens-to-face distance. In order to keep everyone's face in-focus and have enough resolution on the<br>farthest faces (without making nearest faces truly massive) we want to do everything possible to reduce the<br>variance in lens-to-face distance - to reduce the difference in distance between closest...