photographing people dressed in white

sara505

I'm curious as to how people deal with photographing brides and other subjects dressed in white--what is the best technique to expose for skin without blowing out the dress? Is this even possible? I use a 10D/430ex combo, usually shoot in av mode with center-averaging meter, and fel. I use one central focal point and focus on face and then compose, but with the external flash I lose ae lock and my exposure changes when I move the focal point. I realize that evaluative metering would provide ae lock, but I don't get good results with eval metering. I have tried setting the camera on M, exposing for the face (and my exposure stays put when I compose), but the white outfit is to bright

another question--sometimes when I activate fel, my camera goes "dead," the only way out is to turn camera off and then back on again. I called canon, they had no answers, has anyone had this experience, or know what might cause this?

Thank you!:):

sara505

oops
ok, I sure didn't mean to put that smiley with the tongue with my post!

Shay Stephens

I use an incident meter and shoot manually for both camera and flash. And if you can get away with not flat lighting the dress, but instead get the light off to the side, you will have the benefit of letting shadow help define the dress. Even if there is some highlight blow out, it will add to the contrast and generally looks good. But if that same exposure is done with flat frontal light, it will just look over exposed.

When shooting white, use shadows.

sara505

Shay Stephens wrote:

I use an incident meter and shoot manually for both camera and flash. And if you can get away with not flat lighting the dress, but instead get the light off to the side, you will have the benefit of letting shadow help define the dress. Even if there is some highlight blow out, it will add to the contrast and generally looks good. But if that same exposure is done with flat frontal light, it will just look over exposed.

When shooting white, use shadows.

Good advice--thank you.

Shay Stephens

Those first two images were examples using the sun, this one is all flash based but still shows the importance of shadows in defining the dress and allowing the other parts of the scene work:

thebigsky

So it's not a complete no-no to have some blown areas occasionally, in fact I guess it's inevitable?