Recomendations for dark skin and all white clothes?

WingsOfLovePhoto · September 27, 2009

Good afternoon. Was hoping somebody would have some recommendations for shooting a wedding of a very dark skinned couple from Jamaica wearing all white? What is the best way to get light on their faces without blowing out the clothing? The church is very dark (but I can use flash). They want outside pictures with the fall colors and I am used to using existing light in this scenario...do I have to change that? and the reception venue is also kind of dark. ISO of 1600 can be pretty noisy. I have the 85mm 1.8. Is that the lens I should use or should I invest in something else? If I use on camera flash with a bracket what diffuser would you use? Thanks in advance for any responses! Sharing your experiences means alot!

mpriest13 · September 27, 2009

WingsOfLovePhoto wrote:

Good afternoon. Was hoping somebody would have some recommendations for shooting a wedding of a very dark skinned couple from Jamaica wearing all white? What is the best way to get light on their faces without blowing out the clothing? The church is very dark (but I can use flash). They want outside pictures with the fall colors and I am used to using existing light in this scenario...do I have to change that? and the reception venue is also kind of dark. ISO of 1600 can be pretty noisy. I have the 85mm 1.8. Is that the lens I should use or should I invest in something else? If I use on camera flash with a bracket what diffuser would you use? Thanks in advance for any responses! Sharing your experiences means alot!

I would think that ISO 1600 with a D3 or even a D300 should be no problem unless you underexpose badly.

sweet caroline · September 27, 2009

It looks like you also have the 24-70, which I find very useful for weddings.

The faces are more important than the clothes, so keep that in mind. I have never experienced this scenario, so I'm interested in the advice you receive.

Noise is going to be much easier to handle if you expose properly. I didn't believe this at first and would always try to shoot at the lowest iso I thought I could get away with, but then I'd have to bring up exposure in post, which increased the noise. I have found I'm better off bumping up the iso a notch.

It's great that you are allowed to use flash. I prefer to put my flash on a stand and carry it, or place two flashes strategically on stands so that I can move around more freely and still have light where I need it. I'm sure others here will have recommendations about the diffuser. I use the lightsphere on mine. Will you be able to bounce off the ceiling?

Caroline

jeffreaux2 · September 28, 2009

Hey Sandy....

Be very carefull with the flash as darker skin tends to appear shiny when lit too strongly. I wouldny use any direct flash if at all possible and instead bounce it....and maybe even use a half snoot to insure than no direct light strikes the subject(s). Use your umbrellas for formals.

Allowing the ambient light to provide it's fair share in the exposures will also go a long way.

I disagree that the faces are "more important" than the clothing....especially in wedding photography, and I would consider that they are both of equal importance. After all, for what a wedding dress costs, and taking into account how much time a bride spends choosing the dress and other clothing to be worn at her wedding I am sure she wants the details captured in the photographs.

Expose the whites as white. Use the histogram to push those whites right to the edge of exposure...but dont go over the edge. This will insure that your whites are their whitest. Follow up in Lightroom and boost the shadows to bring up the skin tones.

Easy-peasy!

zoomer · September 28, 2009

Same rules as normal expose for the dress. Iso as high as you can stand the grain, shutter speed as slow as you can go to let in as much ambient as possible, don't over flash it. F-2.8.
Then if shooting raw, adjust your exposure so your blinkies are just barely going off and you will be perfect.
Basically what Jeffreaux2 said..ditto.

Tim Kamppinen · October 1, 2009

One thing to keep in mind is that as you said, they do have very dark skin. So their skin should look dark in the photos. It's not like you have to have their faces lit to middle gray and still maintain detail in the dress. Of course you still need to retain detail in the skin, but keep that in mind.

I tend to think that the faces are more important than the clothes. Of course you need to capture detail in the dress, because it's important and expensive, etc., but really if you have some great detail shots of it and some portraits that showcase it, does it really matter if you blow some detail in a candid shot here and there? I just don't see the bride going through the photos, seeing one shot that captured a great moment with good expressions and where everyone's face looks great, and then being disappointed because she can't make out every fine detail of her dress. You just have to decide what's important to a particular shot, and what's not.

Or you can spend hours with the exposure brush either bringing down the dress or bringing up the skin tones... but who wants to do that?

Really though, I don't think it should be as challenging as it might seem. I mean we all shoot white dresses next to black tuxedos, and don't have a problem retaining a whole spectrum of detail there, right?

coldclimb · October 20, 2009

I just stumbled on one answer for this problem while browsing strobist.blogspot.com, and I remembered this thread so I figured I'd post up here. Check this article and skip toward the bottom where he proposes exactly this issue and gives you one way to solve it:
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2007/07/lighting-102-unit-22-specular-highlight.html

Of course that doesn't help a whole lot with the wedding as a whole, but for good portraits it might! Hope it's not too late already.

Recomendations for dark skin and all white clothes?

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