Not so high, lens at 7ft. or so.  It is common for a
wedding photog to get up one or two steps on one of
those aluminum-kitchen-folding-ladder-things for group shots.

Not in my experience, just expansive views of double chins
and nose hair.  People looking down into the lens are scary,
looking up they are cute.

Er, they're sitting, right?  Though having 1/2 the table
stand behind the seated half is the way to go if you
want everyone in the same shot.  See wedding photog & ladder,
above.

You don't want them 'tall & powerful' - you're taking the
shot for the people who will be looking at the subjects,
and they want to see a lot of 'sweet old dears'.

That too.  Don't have people twist in their chairs to face the
camera.  I would do 1/2 the table at a time, but 1/2 standing
behind the seated ones works fine also.

Pros don't hover: slam-bam-thank-you-maa'm

It doesn't have to artsy-fartsy, and aux lighting works with candles:

http://www.nolindan.com/UsenetStuff/olrlxmas.jpg

1-2 second exposure; standing on a step; tripod; longish lens (?).
It's easier to balance light sources in black and white.

If you are real lucky (and it is a good restaurant (not just the food, but
a staff that knows these things)) the auxiliary lighting will
be incandescent turned down with a dimmer so it has the same color
temperature as the candle light.

To me portraits look better in black and white - I think color
takes away from the form of the face.

    *       *       *        *

Whatever you do, don't do:

http://vision.berkeley.edu/wildsoet/Arvo2006/Dinner%20Out.jpg
http://www.caps.ou.edu/reu/reu03/images/DSCN2615.jpg
http://lotos.site.uottawa.ca/people/luigi/Hasan.jpg
http://www.tourismsociety.org/imagestoursoc/photo%20gallery%20dinner%20graham.jpg
http://isi.cbs.nl/Bnews/01b/gani3.jpg

Note the way the on-camera flash enhances the yuck factor...

 It's usually better to be a little higher than lower, and if there
are pitchers, bottles or flowers on the table, it may be essential
that you take the shots from a slight elevation.

 If, as suggested by someone else, you scout out the restaurant
ahead of time, you could check with the owner to see if the
lighting, at least where your party is seated, could be increased
for a minute or two.  Tipping him/her for the consideration would be
a lot less than renting bulky lighting equipment for a day.

 You may want to take a couple of shots without any increased
lighting just to capture the ambience of the candlelit scene, but if
it's too dim to get good pictures where each person is clearly
identifiable, brighter lights will be a big help.  Don't forget,
even if your dim light pictures are reasonably good, when reproduced
in a newsletter or reduced for the web, the results may be degraded
enough to produce "who was that?" questions when viewed at some
future date.  I think that it's likely that the participants would
prefer pictures where fellow employees are clearly identifiable,
rather than murkier, but more artful shots.

 Also, if you have to use the flash, try to position the camera so
that the people are lined up as parallel to the film plane (sensor)
as possible.  If they're lined up parallel to the axis of the lens
(looking down a long, narrow table), you'll get terrible images,
with near faces blown out and distant faces too dark to see clearly.
This is also a consideration even if you're not using flash, since
if you have to use a fast lens wide open, the DOF probably would be
insufficient to have the near and distant faces sufficiently sharp.

That's all it is on most cameras.  In the Canon line, the 1Dmk3 is the
first to have ISO 3200 amplification at the photosite.  The 10D and 1Ds
only amplify at the photosite up to ISO 800.

Most Nikons, as far as I can tell, only have one amplification at the
edge of the sensor (none at the photosites; that's a CMOS trick), and all
of the ISO variability is achieved with amplifying the signal again
before hitting the ADC (the D40 seems to be an exception, though, unless
it has very clean readout but very a very noisy secondary amp or ADC).  
This increases the signal-to-ADC_noise level at higher ISOs, but that is
a relatively subtle difference compared to unique photosite
amplifications a la Canon.  If I had a Nikon, I would tend to gamble more
in favor of extended highlights by under-exposing from a lower ISO.  
Quantization from under-exposure is not much of an issue if read noise at
the new virtual bit depth is still about 1.3 ADU or greater.  IOW, if the
read noise is 2.6 ADU or greater, you can under-expose by one stop
without significant loss; 5.2 or greater, 2 stops; 10.2 or greater, 3
stops, etc.  Nikons are generally about 3-4 ADU at ISO 100, and about 15-
60 ADU at ISO 1600 (15 for the D40, and 60 for the D2X).  I'm talking
here about functional RAW data; any given converter can lessen the
ability to get similar quality with under-exposure at a lower ISO by
blocking up the shadows, and other math issues.  Converters are generally
not well written to handle under-exposure, and quantize the results by
working with too little bit depth.

Someone who has the time might make themselves useful by writing a
program that takes DNG files and scales the RAW data; an ISO 400 under-
exposed by 2 stops, for example, could have its RAW data multiplied by 4
within the DNG, and then the user could convert it with more precision,
and blend the results with an unscaled image to get the extra highlight
range, if used.

...

For off camera work buy some *old* used flash units!
$10 for the optical trigger and $20-30 for the flash.
Nikon's SB-24 is a good example, or get a Nikon SB-26
that has a built in optical trigger.

I have a couple SB-24's, a Vivitar 283, and a couple of
no-name brand X things.  (With anything except the Nikon
models you absolutely to not want to ever directly
trigger it from the camera unless you go to the effort
to first measure the voltage on the trigger to be
certain that it is low enough to not damage the camera.)

These things come in handy every now and then.  Another
helpful thing is to visit a few "second hand" shops and
buy up a few $5 tripods to hold those off camera flash
units.

That doesn't look bad!  The walls and ceiling are nice.
That will even out whatever lighting there is, whether
from a window, a flash, or light fixtures.

*Definitely* go take a few pictures in the room before
hand!  And do it at about 6:00 PM.

What with candles and windows, and maybe or maybe not flash,
I'd be using manual exposure control and be "chimping" all
the way!  Especially if you want the candles to look good in
at least some of the pictures.

'Nother thought: Get 'er done early, lower blinds and adjust so they
direct light to the ceiling. Bounce flash.

Good luck!

Paul Furman <paul-@-edgehill.net> wrote in news:k3upi.4386$Dx2.3773
@newssvr17.news.prodigy.net:

There is no noise reduction in Canon RAW; not in the sense that the term
noise reduction is usually used.  Canon carelessly uses the familiar term
"noise reduction" when what they really should be saying is that they are
avoiding some possible sources of read noise.  The camera does not look
at the digitized data, and filter noise.  The noise is as sharp as noise
should be.

Of course, the benefits are in read noise, which means that the biggest
gains are in the deepest shadows, and there is not a significant benefit
for the Canons in the midtones and highlights, even at high ISO.

I was thinking that's a good suggestion to get the WB set and a little
warmer would be good to maintain the ambiance but then I realized the
sun will be setting over this period so the light will be constantly
changing so I guess it's gonna be auto WB. I have used custom WB before
and it was a big time saver to have the whole shoot come out consistent
but this might be a big chore to adjust each shot.

Well, it can still look strange to have blue on one side of people's
faces & red on the other.

I've got some old lenses that give that effect stopped down a bit.

Not going to have a big flash or probably any flash.

I agree with John's comments above.

This one I also agree with, but it does need some
expansion.

The real trick is to adjust the amount of light provided
by the flash in relation to the light from the candles.
There is no set, cast in concrete, "right" ratio; rather there
are different effects from changing the ratio, and all of
them might be interesting.

To de-emphasize the candles, add more flash.  With
enough, the candles won't even noticeable and might as
well not be there at all.  For some shots, basically to
document who is there and what they were wearing at the
time, that's the ticket.

On the other end of the stick is of course a shot with
almost no flash.  The trick there might be to take a
couple shots without flash to determine an exposure that
just barely keeps the candles within the top end of the
sensors dynamic range, and then add enough flash to
lighten up faces to make people recognizable.  Or may
not that much!  For a picture of the "ambiance" rather
than the people, use less flash.

Lots of creative opportunity there.

Note that one problem with using multiple flash units in
fixed locations, as I suggested earlier, is that you
cannot as easily adjust the amount of light from the
flash to get different lighting ratios from other
sources.

I've found that to be less than true.

Good white balance while shooting works better; even if you can change
it in the raw converter.