exposure for interracial couples

[JIttypop]

I have a wedding where the bride has very dark skin and the groom is very white. We're talking two extremes here.. any advice for proper exposures? They are in the film industry, and therefore have an understanding of photography and will probably analyze the photos
thanks!

[Noel_Carboni]

I use a general rule of "white skin should have 87% to 95% brightness" (i.e., the B value when you sample the lightest skin tones in Photoshop).

I'd aim for the high end of that range with the lighter of this couple then use the Shadows/Highlights function to lighten the dark skin some.

-Noel

[David_Buzzard]

Keep the wedding dress exposed so that it's white, with no blown out details, and let everything else fall where lays. You probably want to shoot RAW as well.

David Buzzard's Technical Blog

[Neil_vN]

Originally Posted by JIttypop

I have a wedding where the bride has very dark skin and the groom is very white. We're talking two extremes here.. any advice for proper exposures?

My suggestion is to shoot like you always do. You are already dealing with two extreme tonal values - the white dress and the black tux. Their skin tones won't be whiter than the dress or darker than the black tux.

And shoot in raw .. this will give you control over contrast in post-processing.
It is MUCH easier dealing with these headaches on the Monday morning with a cup of coffee while editing your raw files, than sweating it out during the shoot with jpgs.

[Mike_Guilbault]

Excellent advice Neil and exactly what I was going to say until I saw you already said it. How do you deal with a white dress and a black tux? Same thing. The camera doesn't know, nor care, whether the subject is human or not. white dress - white guy - dark tux - dark person - doesn't matter.

[Al Schietzsch]

Try to use the light to your advantage - why not pose them so the darker tones are closer to the light source, and the lighter tones more distant from the light, evening things out a little.

[michaelnotar]

i would use incident readings if possible, every possible. ofcourse thats not practical, but try to use atlesat one incident reading under each lighting senario so you know what it should look like.