5 Tips for Photographing People of Varying Skin Tones | B&H Event Space

[@shelleymarieimages8535]

This was so helpful!!! Thank you!!

[@TimDurkan]

Very helpful insights, thank you for sharing... never too old or too experienced to learn.👏🏽

[@Micah-Woods]

Get video! Also, great tips and insight when photographing different types of people!

[@stevenmuncy491]

What great information! Thanks.

[@jasonbodden8816]

That vignetting she's talking about isn't on most lenses at all. Not sure where she got that from. That mostly happens with variable-aperture zoom kit lenses. She keeps using that vignetting thing as an important point. Maybe the lenses she uses all do that but this has not been my experience. With Primes, especially, this is rarely a problem, if ever.

[@kapilbhallafoto]

Very useful

[@alexhoang3638]

Amazing how she stayed PC the whole time. 😂

[@chocomalk]

If your exposure is right then the skin tone will also be right. Ignore the fact that the subjects are people and think of 3 plates, One black one grey and one white, there is only one proper exposure, if you are shifting black towards grey or white to grey then your exposure s off.

[@t-money561]

Sometime the dynamic range between skin tone is greater than 14 stops, so this doesn’t always work.

[@kirkdarling4120]

@@t-money561 No, the dynamic range between human skin tones is less than five stops.

[@t-money561]

@@kirkdarling4120 I seen otherwise

[@carpeicthus]

“Proper” exposure is like a robot who has been trained to shoot and edit for about five minutes. The sunny 16 rule might tell you if film will be blown out but it tells virtually nothing about whether a photo is any good, flattering, properly lit, etc

[@TeshornMakingMoves]

Yea if everyone looked the same. However when the skin tones vary the exposure will have to be adjusted.

[@richardgollar6300]

I was under the impression if you used a light meter it doesn't matter there skin tone. Proper exposure should take care of it shouldn't it?

[@jasonbodden8816]

It doesn't. It's just that you still have to use your eyes and decide if it's dark enough or bright enough. An incident light meter will only read the light that's falling on the person, not the reflected light (yes, I'm aware that brands like Sekonic are making light meters with the ability to meter reflected light as well but I'm talking about a light meter's primary, most used function). Depending on the varying skin tones in a group shot, say, some post processing work might be needed to locally adjust exposure here and there but a light meter will get you extremely close within 1/3 of a stop or so.

[@jasonbodden8816]

If they paid good money for the lighting and they want it for the whole ceremony and whatever, the object isn't to get proper skin tone at that point; it's to preserve the colors of the lighting on their skin somewhat and hit the couple with just a kiss of flash to open up shadows and to expose them enough so they're seen properly. It's not always about proper skin tone and keeping the dress white.

[@kirkdarling4120]

The "Shirley Card" story is a myth. Color film was produced commercially half a century by several companies in Europe and Japan before Kodak created the Shirley Card. Color emulsion scientists had the goal from the beginning of reproducing accurate colors across the spectrum using controlled color patches...NOT Caucasian skin tone(s). Fuji certainly wasn't using a Kodak Shirley card. Further, portraits weren't even the primary color film market in the first half century. Portrait photographers clung to black and white, which could be easily retouched and colored by hand. Color film accuracy was demanded by the military, biologists, astronomers, chemists, horticulturalists, ornithographers, and others far more than for portraits. The goal was accuracy and consistency across the spectrum, not a specialization on Caucasian skin tones. Kodak created the Shirley Card in the 1950s when Congress forced them to permit third-party companies to process Kodacolor amateur print film. The important tone in the Shirley Card was the gray background that could be read by a densitometer for neutrality, not the image of the woman. That was merely for "interest" and secondarily as a "sanity check." The densitometer reading was the important thing. Shirley Card never, ever had ANYTHING to do with the formulation of color film emulsions. They were designed for color printing from Kodacolor amateur films by third-party labs. The failing of color technology was primarily in dynamic range. It was up to the photographer to learn skills necessary to overcome the shortfalls of the technology, which photographers who commonly served black clients learned to do.

[@RayosMcQueen]

Japanese AI needs a more diverse training set.

[@jasonbodden8816]

*Talks about backlight not being good for some dark tones then uses an example of top light on a bald guy to support her point* :/