Shooting Dark Skin Tones..

Hey all Just landed a job that involves shooting dark skinned/Asian folk. The new owners of a local shop have had their 1st baby and they've asked me to take some shots of the new little'un. They're more light skinned than black if you see what I mean...anyway....

Has anyone got any experience of shooting this?
Any tips or tricks you can pass on?

Cheers All
Daz.

No real experience but if you use a 18% grey card for your exposure readings then subject colour/tone shouldn't effect the results.

Not that I want to imply anything, but It's like shooting a dark hair animal. You have to overexpose by a half to one stop to avoid losing every details in shadows while doing close shots.

However, if you are going for a picture in a "normal" surrounding, you shouldn't need to compensate the exposure.

As previously said, if you're unsure, read the exposure off a grey card.

I remember the advice from my film days was to underexpose by half a stop or a stop for dark-skinned people because standard metering would try to represent them as 18% grey, which is generally too light. Similarly, purists used to advise overexposing slightly for light-skinned Caucasians so they didn't come out darker than they really are. Same principle as overexposing snow scenes and underexposing scenes with a lot of dark tones in them. In practice, I've never bothered to make adjustments for light skin but it could become an issue with folks who are very dark. You can obviously adjust all this at the editing stage but it's probably better to get it right in-camera. An 18% card is probably the answer (or 22% as Stephan (Anvh) used to insist).

As a general rule of thumb, pure black -2 stops,, purée white + 2 stops. So you could try - a 3rd of a stop and then another - 3rd of a stop. A light meter would make life simple as it would not make a difference what colour the skin was as it would not be reading reflected light.

Can't see the issue. Expose so that nothing is clipped and and use a local adjustment brush in editing to make the kiddie look right.

Either way shoot RAW and give yourself some room to adjust.

pretty much what I said.







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Thanx everyone, I had been thinking the camera may overexpose a little so taking something off makes sense, I work in half stops so that's where I guess I'll start, and I always shoot raw, thanx again folks

There is absolutely no need to do anything differently at all link

Why not just bracket it both sides by one stop?

Regards, Horst

Because by the OP's description of his sitters, they aren't a stop darker than the average caucasian

You need to keep the skin tones very light, so be careful not to blow out too much of the white objects such as clothing and sheets.

I once had to some portraits of a businessman from Pakistan and he said it looked like he had been down a coal hole..... I printed them lighter and he was very happy with them

Some examples......
http://www.sunilnairphotography.com/kids-photography.php


http://webneel.com/top-indian-photographer-suresh-natarajan-best-photographs-tip...

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My grandson is mixed race and I've never had a problem with his skin colour.The camera usually knows best.