Black and White Skin

Oddball

Oddball

Oddball

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Joined
18 Oct 2002
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564
Location
London
Hi guys,

A good friend of mine has asked me to take some informal shots at her wedding. She is white and her husband to be has very dark skin - are there any exposure tips you can offer me?

Thanks!
 
It depends if their range of skin tone falls within 18% grey, i.e. exactly how light is she and how dark is he?
Secondly the same amount of light will be more reflective on her skin and less reflective on his. If that is an issue in the real-world I wouldn't know as I haven't shot in this circumstance yet. But I remember Zack Arias had these issues in the studio once, and took two exposures.
 
Actually this is something I encountered with some shots I took last year, not anything formal or studio based though. My one friend has a very black shade of skin and shooting in a dimly lit environment, I found during processing that it was difficult to manage stopping the blacks from being totally crushed on him, thus loosing all detail, versus overexposing white people.

I ended up doing quite a bit of dodging and burning to selectively control what was going on. I'm sure you could combine exposures and play around with HDR stuff if you are that way inclined.

I would think in a studio or somewhere with a lot of light that you should be able to far better control it.
 
Oddball said:
Hi guys,

A good friend of mine has asked me to take some informal shots at her wedding. She is white and her husband to be has very dark skin - are there any exposure tips you can offer me?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

This can be challenging but it is usually the case the groom is in a dark suit so getting details out of that is not really any different.

ETTR without clipping highlights is the best course of action. Highlights will depend on the environment. In a Dark church without direct lighting you should be OK, outside with sun you have issue, outside when overcast is easy going. However, better to verge on the cautious side to prevent clipping the brides dress. (ETTR can still mean applying a lot of negative EC to ensure highlights are not clipped, it just means go as far right as you can before clipping occurs, and clipping occurs beyond the right of the histogram because the histogram is based on the embedded jpeg, not the RAW).


A lot also depends on the camera. Modern Nikon and Sony sensor have a huge shadow depth you can pull details right up from without any false color /banding/noise patterns. If you shoot something like a D600/D800/D3/D4 then you have more breathing room when you protect the highlights, on a Canon sensor you are going to have to be a little bit more careful.



Also try to keep the ISO down if possible, if you are going to be pulling up shadow detail then a lower ISO really helps. Higher ISOs are way less destructive of the mid and high tones than the shadows so if you are used to shooting ISO 3200 and find that acceptable at good exposures you will have a much harder time bring up underexposed dark skin.



Maybe you have a chance to do some test exposures with the friend to see how it goes.

Good Luck!
 
Histogram is practically useless in allot of circumstances at weddings as it doesn't distinguish highlights that are ok to blowout and highlights that are not ok to blow out. You are better off looking at blinking highlights and seeing if the girls face or too much of her dress is blinking.

Obviously what camera gear you are using can play a part. If you are shooting with a camera that has a Exmor sensor (Modern Sony/Nikon), you don't need to pay any attention to the shadows so forget about all that ETTR stuff it's a waste of effort. Just expose for the bride/highlights.
If you are shooting Canon, maybe a bit of ETTR is worthwhile, but you risk blowing out highlights more often. I would consider shooting in Manual.
 
Histogram wont tell where you have blown highlights but it is useful to understand the exposure, which is not easy from the LCD screen under different lighting. Yeah, if you only want to detect blown highlights then the blinker setting is better.

And I disagree, ETTR, is always useful, regardless of sensor. Modern Nikon & Sony sensors do have way more shadow depth but ETTR will still maximize the shadow detail and DR. If you are worried about shadow detail then ETTR becomes even more valuable. This is all assuming you wont be clipping highlights, which I clearly emphasized and cautioned about.
 
^^^
Nope ettr is a waste of effort in a wedding environment with something like a D800 and maybe even a D7000. One stop or less noise is shadows is basically pointless worrying about. You are better off worrying about composition and capturing moments than over exposing while not trying to blow out highlights.
 
An Exception said:
^^^
Nope ettr is a waste of effort in a wedding environment with something like a D800 and maybe even a D7000. One stop or less noise is shadows is basically pointless worrying about. You are better off worrying about composition and capturing moments than over exposing while not trying to blow out highlights.
Click to expand...

That may well be true in a normal wedding but the OP is specifically worried about DR issues and shadow recovery - the exact scenarios where ETTR is most beneficial, regardless of sensor.
With things like highlights I explicitly said that the need to preserve them may overrule the need to push shadows up at capture time - that all depends on the lighting of the scene as I said.
 
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i must confess, that whilst i'm glad i opted for canon as i believe that overall the 5diii has the edge over the d800 (mainly for me it was the ergonomics, silent shutter, and file size), I truly envy the amazing dynamic range of the d800 and freely admit that at times it would make life a hell of a lot easier!!
 
Having exposure linked to all the focus points and not just the centre point is another reason imo.
I've looked favourably a couple of times at a 5d3, but I have a system in terms of how I work, and without the above and DR, for me any way it's a downgrade.
 
true, although i don't use spot metering any way so have just got used to how the centre weighted works so that doesn't really affect me. In ideal world though, they'd be a camera that combined the best of both systems as they obviously both have their pros and cons :)
 
Depending on how much olympus tech (super fast contrast detect AF, 5 axis stabilisation) Sony put's into it's new range of FF mirrorless, then I may switch over to Sony.

Could then just use a Sigma 35/85 1.4 if the camera's are a-mount, and have some very fast but stabilised primes.

I just hope they take some styling cues from the RX1 rather than the A99.
 
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