Really stupid question.....

W

wblanchard

Guest
I feel very stupid asking this question and really hope it's not offensive, but I am taking photos of a male model next week....he is african-american and i've never shot photos of someone with a darker complextion. I normally meter a scene with my handheld meter and shoot away, but i will be using neopan b/w film and needed to ask about over or under exposures. will i need to do anything different because of the darker skin tone? I was thinking of using a grey card.
 
My "Zone VI" book places Caucasian skin on Zone VI which would be one stop more open than your 18% gray card reads. The gray card is placed on Zone V. The book places dark skin on Zone V (Hispanics, Asians etc.) but depending upon exactly how dark your model's skin is, you may want to expose Zone IV or between Zones V & IV.... that is, CLOSE DOWN (under expose) a half or full stop from your 18% gray card reading.

You can always bracket your shots if you're not sure.

BTW, that is not even CLOSE to being a stupid question.

Walker
 
Thanks for the replies and making me feel good now. I think i will underexpose by a full stop, because of the darker skin.
 
Guys, you're confusing poor WBlanchard. For darker tones, to reproduce "faithfully", you underexpose if metering through the lens. You overexpose for lighter tones.

Just remember it this way: if metering snow, you overexpose 1.5 or 2 stops.
 
mmm I measure incidental in a zone IV card, my meter will think it is a zone V... right?
so it'll give me 1 stop overexposure? thus I have to close down 1 stop.

so shouldn't she close 1 stop? -> uncerexpose?
 
WBlanchard. I think you may be safer if you meter a grey card and go from there. If you're still not sure, bracket. You may use more film, but you'll gain more usable shots.
 
I think the confusion may lie on how you are thinking of "overexposure" and "underexposure". If you meter a white sheet at 1/60, then you set your shutter speed at 1/15, thus you overexpose. If you meter black satin sheets at 1/60, then you set your shutter speed at 1/250, thus you underexpose
 
Metering the dark skin directly, the meter will try to make that come out medium in tone, probably lighter than reality. So for a more natural or correct look, you'd want to give it less exposure. Skin tones vary, so it's hard to generalize. For comparison purposes, most anyone's palm will meter 1 stop brighter than average (Zone VI).

With an incident meter, it doesn't see or care what the tones of the subject are, it just sees the light falling on the subject. Use this reading as-is on your camera for a correct rendition of the scene. This is why I prefer incident metering... 🙂
 
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I bet this is getting confusing very fast now. Maybe we should have votes 😕 .

Anyway, let me make sure I get you right. You are using a handheld reflective meter (a spotmeter or the like)? You are metering the skin area which is darker than average. Say by one stop. If you use the meter reading unchanged, the dark skin will be rendered as a medium tone (medium gray if you like), which is a stop lighter than it should be. Likewise everything else in the scene will be rendered a stop brighter (lighter toned) than they should be. I am assuming you want to reproduce the actual skin tone on film faithfully.

If you want to do this, you should stop down by one stop from the meter reading (which is the same as underexposing by one stop with respect to the meter reading) so that the dark skin is rendered dark. Don't think in terms of underexposure or overexposure, it sounds confusing. It will in fact give you 'correct' exposure. By 'correct', I mean the way it should look as it does to the eye. If you want to render the guy lighter than he is, you could use the meter reading itself. But the tone of everything else in the scene will also be shifted to the lighter side.

I hope I am not expanding in too much detail what you might already know. It's just that I have a problem being concise sometimes 🙂 .
 
Thanks for all the confusion people 🙂

I will bracket my shots...try all the tricks and pull out my slide rule too!
 
Correct, Doug. That's why it should be stressed that this applies if you're metering reflected light, not incident light. By metering through the lens you're metering reflected light.
 
Incident = give a stop extra

Reflected = give a stop less

In practice, always err on the side of over-exposure. The penalties for overexposure are slight; those for underexposure, great.

Cheers,

Roger
 
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Under equals darker, over equals lighter. For dark skin, overexpose so you can get skin details. Bracketing though will save you and you can study the negs through a loop to see the difference. Take notes.

chris
canonetc
 
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