I'm a newbie -- sorry about this post. I've been lurking and posting for a while, so I don't think this is redundant. Forgive me if it is. When I first starting shooting manual, I was having a hard time properly exposing faces. I nearly always underexpose. I've been working on proper exposure and I can get a pretty good histogram -- about half-way through the 5th box, so I don't overepose a lot. But I often have to shoot people in a sea of white - at the beach, in a white room, etc. And this really throws the metering in the camera off. I use both evaluative and spot metering, but I wanted to ask you all how you get properly exposed skin without using a light meter. I have a gray card, but even its instructions say to adjust up or down by a stop or two depending on what you're shooting. If I'm shooting a landscape or background, I'll meter off the sky or the grass or something that's similar to a neutral gray. But this doesn't always work when I'm working with people (landscapes are much more forgiving).
So how do you typically expose for skin tone using your in-camera meter? I live in an area with a miriad of skin tone -- We have anything from fair to oompa loompa tan to black. I find that tan is the hardest to properly expose. Any hints? I'm practicing a LOT, but I want to see what other people do. I find I'm getting MUCH better at it, but I wanted some more hints.
Some things I've tried -- if I'm shooting into a lot of white/bright, I'll go at least one or two stops above a "proper" exposure to make up for the white. Sometimes I'll spot-meter semi-tan skin and assume I need to go a half to up to two stops over to get a proper exposure (not a perfect gray). With darker skin, I'll go a stop or two under.
I find the histogram only helps if I want to keep from blowing out details. But it doesn't help if all the colors are much brighter or much darker than the skin tone I'm exposing. Thanks for the help!
I have had some issues doing this in the past as well. It took me a long time to figure out some of the basics. Most of those epiphanies I don't remember any more, but I do recall two major breakthroughs that had HUGE positive effects on my photography.
My first big breakthrough was when I learned how to manually set the white balance. Personally, I prefer to set the color temperature. It didn't take long (a few months) to develop a good sense of the color temperature in a scene, though I may take a shot of a grey card to verify later. I just remember that most indoor lighting is balanced with a setting of 2800K, a strong flash is at 5500K (don't forget to balance the color temperature of light from a strobe with the ambient light!), outdoors in the sun requires about 5500K, and outdoors in the shade requires about 7000K. These values provide me with a good starting point, but usually, I have to tweak them to get rid of the oompa loompas and the Blue Man Group wannabes.
My second big breakthrough came when I realized that I could tune the contrast as well as the exposure. It's a pain on my 30D (buried under the picture styles configuration), but it's absolutely essential to getting JPEGs directly from the camera that have the proper exposure. That said, I shoot RAW+JPEG; I try to get the JPEG right to remind me what I saw when I took the shot, but almost always develop the RAW file for the final photo.
I like to do what you describe: use the in-camera spot metering as a light meter. I tend to point it at various objects in the scene to help me understand which things are going to be really dark and which are going to be really bright. I try to rely on that and my general sense of the scene, rather than some rules like two stops under for dark skin.
Deb, good question....and a good reply from James.
My Simple Suggestion: there are many ways to approach exposure and a good photographer may need to learn several techniques for different conditions.
If you do not find your answer here (to your satisfaction), I recommend you try another forum. There are other forums where this type of question gets discussed very frequently and with many different approaches to the challenges.
Try dpreview.com for a start. Go to the forum that is focused on the Canon 5D. It generally has many active discussion threads and is considerably different from this People forum.
Basically your light meter sees the world as neutral gray and assumes everything will reflect 18% of the light it receives back toward the camera.
Point your camera at a white wall and take a picture using the your normal metering method and the shot will be dull gray. Do the same against a black wall and the shot will be a dull gray.
A quick tip is when you are shooting in bright conditions set exposure compensation to +1EV and when shooting a dark subject set it to -1 EV.
You need to do some serious reading on exposure to fully understand what's going on. You could start by googling the 'zone method' or you could buy a book on exposure. I always recommend the classic books like The Camera by Ansel Adams, now he could take a picture
Jonathan H wrote:
Another EXCELLENT book option is Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson.
+1 -- I've read this book twice. Definitely enjoyed it, and I feel like I put the concepts into practice every day. I think I have the hardest time when I'm shooting tan people surrounded by white. I never know what to really meter for. Spot metering on tan skin isn't quite a neutral gray, plus properly exposed tan skin isn't very attractive, so I'm tempted to overexpose, but then the scene may be overexposed as well. Doesn't matter with white walls. Not necessarily good on a wedding dress.
Also -- when I'm in a room surrounded by all white, I'm tempted to blow out the details in the white to get normal-looking skin, but then ... the details are blown. Hmm ... I guess this is a much more complicated subject than I'm making it.
I guess the proper question would be, if I spot meter skin, is there a typical way exposure compensation you do based on whether someone is fair, tan, dark, or really dark?
Thanks for the responses. Every response has been very helpful.
Try spot metering the brightest part of your scene and the darkest part of the scene and then use an exposure value midway between the two. Failing that, bracket
Jonathan H wrote:
Another EXCELLENT book option is Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson.
I don't know about that book. I've read it and he recommends metering from blue sky as if it was gray, mentions nothing about how much exposure compensation to add.
One thing I did like that he mentions is to meter off your own hand once you "calibrate" it. Never thought of doing that before.
Deb,
Exposure with a digital camera is related to capturing the best image across the dynamic range of the camera.
Then, when using camera raw, or another RAW converter, using the exposure, brightness and contrast sliders to optimize the tonality captured.
Thomas Knoll says that the exposure slider in Adobe camera raw is intended to get the black (0) and white (255) points at the extremes of the histogram without clipping. Then use the brightness and contrast sliders to place the tonality properly within the image.
Presuming that this approach is used either in Light Room, 0Photoshop CS3 or another RAW processing application, the best exposure is one that keeps important white areas from clipping. (the histogram is a good way to fine tune this in the camera.) Then process the image based on the design premise Thomas describes.
If for some reason you need or want to shoot JPG then as described earlier you have to come up with a compromise that will always leave something to be desired.
When I was young and shooting transparency film which was also before in camera meters the rule of thumb was "average" caucasian skin at meter reading. (I would use the back of my hand with a reflected meter presuming I was in the same light as the subject.) Half stop down for light skin. (small kids, blondes) Half stop open for tanned and Mediterranean complexions. Stop open for darker skin and maybe bracket another half stop if skin is dark and in shades.
One thing we keep forgetting is that light meters default to 14% while a gray card is 18%. No one, especially Kodak, seems to be able to explain this dichotomy. Which is why a lot of people think their camera is under exposing when they use a gray card for exposure.
Macbeth (now Xrite) makes, as do others, a card that has almost white (230), mid-gray (128) and almost black (30). This is a good thing to have in your camera bag for critical work. Taking a shot in raw shows you three nice spikes that you can make sure are properly placed in the histogram.
The Macbeth color checker includes 6 gray squares that can also be used.
Nice thing about using the color checker for a reference shot in the light that predominates is that Thomas Knoll uses the second square from the left as the white balance default in Camera RAW. Thus, when converting the RAW files the reference image can be white balanced and then that setting can be used for all the images shot in that light during the session.
I really wish there was an answer to this questions (maybe 42 ??). I certainly don't have one that fits in all cases. However, most good photographers I know that "understand light" follow one of two basic strategies:
1. Shoot manual exposure. Initial light levels are made with either averaging or spot metering and examination of the image/histogram. "Experience" in various situations guides you how to adjust the exposure within a single shooting situation by changing ISO, shutter speed or aperture. If the situation changes, (e.g. you move to the other side of the subject), you re-meter or choose a new base exposure.
2. Shoot auto exposure. An initial histogram/image check is made to verify general exposure levels. "Experience" in various situations guides you how to adjust the exposure using the exposure +/- compensation based upon your evaluation of background and subject while you are shooting.
For difficult shooting conditions, you have to rely on RAW image files to give you a fighting chance to recover any judgmental error you made.
As Dmward said, shooting is really only half of the equation. "Developing" raw files is the second half; all raw vs jpeg flamers stand down please! . When I was shooting film in school I was told to expose for the shadows & develop for the highlights (I think). But it points out that photography, for most of it's history, has been a 2 step process- exposure & development, or processing. Many have abandoned the processing to a large degree, and just let the camera make the decisions. I said all of that to say this- to get the most dynamic range from your images, you need to make good use of exposing & processing, neither one can really do it all.
Dominik Lazars wrote:
I don't know about that book. I've read it and he recommends metering from blue sky as if it was gray, mentions nothing about how much exposure compensation to add.
One thing I did like that he mentions is to meter off your own hand once you "calibrate" it. Never thought of doing that before.
Yeah - that's pretty much an old trick. The palm of a hand is actually pretty consistent between various races. It's actually about 1/3 to 1/2 stop brighter than a gray card. It so happens that using that reading makes a pretty nice B&W exposure for Caucasians. In answer to the "standard values" question. I dunno how accurate this is but it's always worked for me:
Fair Skin: +1.5 EV
"average" caucasian: +1 EV
"Light" dark skinned folks: (asians, spanish for example) - 0
Medium dark: -.5 EV (Latino, Indian, some asian)
Dark: -1 EV (darker Indian, negro)
Of course there's variation and it helps to know even a simplified zone system like the 5 point zone system. Best thing is to take a spot meter and practice recognizing which zone a subject falls in. I would like to add that color zone training is essential since humans have a bias for greens and reds. Of course any practitioner of the zone system will be quick to point out that *you* determine where your subject falls on the tonal scale. It's intended to be an artistic and deliberate choice.
Anyway - as in most things there is no substitute for practice with feedback.
Regrads,
Jon
the longer you use the same camera you get accustomed to it. you will know if you got a good exposure by just looking at the histogram. also watch for blinking areas. it just takes some experience and you will get used to getting good exposures everytime.
