Originally posted by kenyee If you're using flash, run the shutter at 1/30th to get more ambient (that was my biggest mistake) and use the flash for fill (if you have no clue what I'm talking about just run the 540 and bounce it as much as possible to get indirect light).
I'm going to disagree with this.
Here's why.
1) Bounce kills flash power in a real hurry and increases recycle times tremendously. You don't want to be waiting for your flash.
2) Bounce flash is all over the place for light quality, and it can be pretty jarring to the viewer of the pictures if they are all over the map regarding light.
On camera direct flash is ugly, but it works.
One thing you will notice with direct flash (and is something I forgot about when I made my original post) is that with the camera vertical, shadows off the side of the subject are inevitable. By rights, you want the flash directly over top of the lens to push the shadows behind the subjects and out of sight.
This means either an off camera flash (Metz hammerhead style, though there are others), or a flash bracket and cabling.
Since this is a one off job on a budget, if you can rent that sort of thing, do so, but make sure you know how to use it, or stay with horizontal camera position.
To do this you will be needing a wider angle lent though since you will want to crop a lot of your shots down to vertical.