How do you get good photos of people with extremely dark skin? I’m talking beyond milk chocolate…into tones of dark chocolate perhaps beyond. My camera really isn’t rising to the occasion and attempts at fixing the picture after the fact aren’t working either. There just doesn’t seem to be much detail to work with.
Ideas?
Much like very bright white scenes like snow need to be overexposed to turn out correctly, very dark objects need to be 1 to 2 stops underexposed. I dunno what kind of camera you are using, but if you aren’t able to manually control the exposure, look in the manual for ‘exposure compensation’. The problem is that the light meter in the camera sees everything as 18% gray. When the subject is dark skin, the meter is trying to make it 18% gray with the available light, thus overexposing the subject.
I don’t want to resoprt to the “just Google it, duh!” response, but I’ve stumbled upon guides for photographing black dogs that may be helpful, if you can find them.
What about photographing someone with very dark skin among a crowd of light-skinned people? I remember one photo from one of my high school yearbooks that featured a bunch of white kids, and a floating pair of eyes accompanied by a disembodied grin lurking between two of them.
Part of the problem is using a point and shoot. Trying to defeat the automation can be a real PITA but I’ll start altering exposure as best I can on the fly.
Re: groups. Exactly. If I were posing them on a stoll with control over the background etc., but amid a group of others…
Unless you have a very wide dynamic range (meaning you need a DSLR) and full control over exposure, then you can’t make diverse shades look good side by side and even then it’s really difficult. You can use a graduated neutral density filter but that won’t help a person in a crowd.
Do one shot with the correct exposure for the white faces. Then do another shot with the correct exposure for the black face. Then Photoshop the black face in photo #2 into photo #1.
I’d say just take the photo and then use Photoshop to adjust the contrast to whatever level you feel comfortable with. These people, whether white or black, have normal skin color that cannot be far outside the range of any digital camera.
Even better, have the camera automatically bracket the exposure, and then use something like bracketeer to create a merged, high-dynamic-range image.
Agreed. You do sometimes need a kick of fill flash for very dark skinned people, but you’re not going to need something as dramatic as HDR to capture the full range of details in black and white skin tones. At worst, just dodge (lighten) the dark skin tone in Photoshop. No need whatsoever for complex merging of multiple exposures.
If you don’t have enough detail in the shadows of the dark skin tone, you have one of two problems: either your lighting is poor or you are underexposing and clipping your shadow detail. My guess, without seeing your photos, is your lighting probably leaves something to be desired.
If that is truly the best solution then, IMHO, it is a terrible indictment of digital photography/photographers. Get a better camera or, preferably, learn how to adjust the exposure on the one you have.
http://volunteerism.meetup.com/185/photos/?photoAlbumId=358270
OK, here’s a bunch, with different lightings, groupings, etc. I only took the first 37. I used paint.net and on some, went with the program’s recommendations for adjustments b/c my attempts didn’t make much improvement. Another volunteer took the rest with an i-Phone (or similar).
You can do a lot of things with PS, but if the camera does not capture the image correctly ( under or over exposure ), PS will never be able to recover it for you. It is important to learn your cameras limitations and, more importantly, never let it outsmart you.
First three shots: Picture is exposed fine. You need fill flash to get detail out of the faces. See the shadows cast by the caps they’re wearing? You’re killing a lot of detail there. You can probably recover quite a bit of it by just dodging the faces in Photoshop. But you don’t have any wiggle room exposure-wise. You don’t want to open up your exposure any more. Some would say the photo is slightly overexposed. Your problem here is not exposure, it’s lighting.
Pictures 4&5 - detail looks fine here. The photo is a bit too contrasty, which will kill some of your extreme shadow and highlight detail, but for a point & shoot shot, I think it’s okay. In picture 5, the left side of the frame is overexposed by the flash, but that’s because the camera was weighing the exposure for the center of the frame.
The lighting can be improved on pretty much all of these. On camera flash is not flattering for most portraits. However, lighting issues aside, except for the first few shots, I don’t have any issues with how much detail you’re capturing in the dark skin tones.
You should always aim for nailing your exposures, of course. But even the correct exposures may require tweaking: a curve adjustment, a dodge or burn here or there, a slight color correction. This is nothing different than the film days. Even wire service photographers, under immense deadline pressure, usually run their photos through Photoshop for a quick curve/levels adjustment, perhaps some selective darkening and lightening (burning and dodging), and maybe an unsharp mask.
When I shoot, I shoot to give myself the most flexible file with the most information. If I have to shoot JPEG, I will shoot it at a lower contrast and saturation setting than any of the Nikon-defined presets to give myself a bit of headroom in post processing and not risk blowing out any important detail. I will then use curves and other adjustments in post.
A long time ago, when we had to use actual film, the trick was to expose for the shadows then develop for the highlights. You could then further manipulate the image by dodging & burning particular areas during the printing process.
The biggest problem was that film could record an approximate 10-step tonal range, but paper could only effectively handle about 7. And color was worse than black & white. To really get good results you had to be not only a good photographer (image composition, framing, juxtaposition, lighting, etc.) you also had to be a fair chemist as well (or work really closely with someone you trusted).
During my college years, I did the developing and printing for a photographer that shot a lot of black weddings. The ultimate nightmare (for me) was to have a very dark complected bride in a beautiful white dress. Without serious darkroom manipulation, you would either get a lovely smiling bride in a white blob of a dress, or two eyes and a smile above a beautiful gown. After multiple attempts, I would finally get a print I was satisfied with. Then, upon delivery, the clients would be so pleased with the result, they would immediately order multiple reprints! :eek:
All that said, none of it probably applies to the digital world we now know. Oh, well!
Stana Claus
In the first picture I would have definately switched the fellow on the far right with the one sitting behind the guy with the hat. Composing the picture and balancing has to count for something.
Also, in bright sun like that or with extreme contrasts (see shirt vs. skin in picture 4) would a polarizing filter help, or perhaps a combination of polarizing filters to equalize the tone a little?
They do look a little overexposed but with point and clicks sometimes all you can do is play with filters, lighting and composition (seriously, a dark skinned guy with a dark t-shirt background? It’s a floating hat.).
I’ve measured dark skin against a neutral gray card and I got a full 2 f-stops in metering. The subject I used for the test did not have the darkest complexion, which might add another 1/2 f-stop. In comparison, Caucasian skin would be very close to neutral gray.
The best method would be to group your subjects and use a remote flash on the darker subjects. Unfortunately, digital cameras seem to have less latitude for light variance. It’s always a compromise when there is extremely light colors next to dark colors. If you come close you can use fill-flash in Photo Shop.
If you don’t have a remote flash setup then experiment with the use of flash to fill and group people with dark skin or dark clothing closer to the flash. That’s the beauty of digital cameras. You can experiment and it costs you nothing to see the results. If you have something like a D-70 it will keep track of all the camera settings so you can print out the image and then jot down the settings that work.
Remember that metering off of dark skin will tend to overexpose.
Caucasian skin is usually about 2/3 stop lighter than 18% gray. Most old-school film photography guides will teach you to open the exposure by a full stop if metering off white skin. (With negative film, the guideline is to err on the side of slight overexposure.)
I don’t know if this is an option, but throw it out anyway.
The PR person at a local hospital had a problem with a very dark nurse who was about to be “Nurse of the Month” and she didn’t photograph properly.
I told her that photography was just reflected light, so why not put some oil on her face?
Since it was a hospital they had baby oil so that’s what they used. The portrait came out. And all her family wanted a copy of the photo because they couldn’t photograph her either.