Perfect Planning Prevents Poor Performance, or something like that

I wanted to expand on an idea from earlier.

I was talking about light bouncing all over the place and it being hard to control it, especially when there are other factors like moving people and limited time to solve problems.

It might be useful to show and example.

What I wanted was to evenly light the training room, which was very dark, even with the lights on. The room is small and crammed with computers. My plan was to use two strobes aimed at the ceiling from either side of the room. The ceiling gets lit and becomes a big soft light box, more light falls, badda bing, even light. For more details, see David Hobby's version here.

So, I set out to do just that. Well, my problem was the position of the lights. Pointed straight up, they didn't light enough space and tended to wind up in the shot. Pointed at an angle, they cast crazy shadows like the ones you see above. In some cases, that led to okay accidents, like the shot of Darshan, but it's not what I wanted.

Eventually, by moving the lights around and changing their angles, I got sort-of what I wanted, but not really. I had to limit the experiment because we were at work on a break.

Point is; actually doing it taught me way more than reading about it. If I had been smarter, I would have spent the lunch hour figuring out the position and then taken the shots 123.

The other thing I'm trying to balance is TTL. Now, TTL is a system where the camera figures out how much light to send to the flashes. I could set the light levels manually, but the thing I don't like about that is that you need to adjust the levels each time you change the zoom depth of the lens. When you change your mind as much as me, TTL is a nice flexible option. The downside to it is that you rely on the camera. And I'm still trying to figure out what affects that. For example, if I'm set to single spot focus instead of area will that affect the light throw? What about metering? Again, the only real way to learn is to do it again and again.

What does all this failure mean for India? Means my plan is to first get the shot and then try tricksy stuff. Means my plan is to take a bajillion pictures. And practice beforehand.