Hard to title this one, so here’s what I mean. I used to design a lot of newsletters for different manufacturing/food processing operations. They usually featured dozens, if not hundreds, of head shots of employees. These were usually Polaroids. The ones of Caucasians looked ok, the ones of African Americans were often just a dark face with hardly any contrast. It seems to be that way with any cheaper photographic process.
Is there anything inherent in the technology that makes this so? Do you think it would be any different had photography first been developed in Africa?
You’re just now finding out that cameras are racists? Wow, dude time to come out from under that rock.
This is going to sound awful, but as a non-pro-photographer who has been in animal rescue for many years I am aware that black or darker furred animals are a challenge to photograph. Just one link of millions.
Surely there is a similar issue in taking photos of people with darker skin? I don’t get the “racist technology” part. At all.
Back in the 80s, you had to pay extra for most all black cameras. 35mm SLRs, that is.
Photographs are based on reflected light from the subject. Dark skin reflects less light, by definition. I’m not sure there’s really any way around this issue, regardless of where the camera was invented or by whom.
When I did portraits and weddings, I used lower contrast film, like Vericolor, and often used an incident meter. (Reads light falling on a subject, not reflected from them.) Many times, as often as able actually, I would use a reflector for that last little bit of catchlight.
It’s not hard to get a good exposure of a dark skinned person, but you do have to “work around” the auto exposure meter’s 18% grey. Left on auto, esp in the days before Matrix or smart metering, you got ugly snow scenes and ugly dark scenes.
It was a clumsy title, I’ll admit.
From the very beginning, it was about segregating the black from the white.
I once shot a lovely model with skin about the color of espresso. I had to ramp up the lighting until it nearly cooked her to get “normal” highlights and tone.
So it’s the exposure meters that are racist! :mad:
God said, “Let there be light”. He said nothing about dark. God is racist.
Once a Nikon D610 called me a “dago”.
Yes. 
When I sold AE-1s and XG-7s, I often got my Black customers back in store with complaints about their family pics. We would show the customers how to adjust the exposure compensation for better results. Our in store lab also would do quality control inspections as they ran each order, so we didn’t have a lot of issues when they left their film for us to do. (Applies to ski vacations, too)
Once Matrix metering came out, like in the FA, 8008, and T-90, I was pretty much out of retail stores, so I don’t have any anecdotal evidence.
It’s been an ongoing problem for a while now.
No not really, it’s the world that’s racist.
You could set exposure meters so that they defaulted to a brighter setting and if you did then darker areas would come out with better exposure. This would assist with photographing people with dark skin. The problem is, everything else would tend to come out over-exposed.
The closer your skin tone is in reflectivity to the average reflectivity of the world around you, the easier it is to find an exposure setting that will work for both you and the background. As your skin tone gets further (darker or lighter) from average reflectivity, it becomes inevitable that on average either your skin is going to be underexposed and the background overexposed or vice versa.
On top of that, at the risk of stating the obvious, cameras work off reflected light and dark surfaces reflect less light. It is inherently easier for a camera to cope with too much light than too little. It’s just physics.
Actually, yes, it is racist. And I’m not talking about the trouble with light on brown skin (although that’s true, too). I’m talking about Shirley Cards, or Color Cards, developed in the 1940’s for color balancing film. As you might expect, they were based on not only caucasian women, but a pale ones wearing white gloves at that.
There wasn’t a racially neutral color card until 1995.
Always remember: Photoshop is your friend.
Yes, they’re quite racist only not against blacks: They’re racist against Asians.
Now, ignore the fact Nikons are made in Japan and you can get a really good indignation going.
A Macbeth Colour Checker was still a valuable tool if you did all processes from in camera to in darkroom.
We photographers found a way to take into account differing skin tones and clothing. A good number of the weddings I did in Houston were Hispanic. Quite a range of skin tones from virtually pale to dark brown. I never had an issue rendering everyone pleasantly. That’s what photographers do. Understand our craft and make proper adjustments. It’s really not that hard.