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Question about exposing for different skin colors.

H

harmonica44

I want to shoot a walk and talk scene, outdoors in daylight, on the street.

I noticed that a blonde woman's hair and skin is blown out in the image, where as the darker skinned, darker haired man, looks correctly exposed. If I expose correct for lighter skinned and haired woman, the man will then be underexposed. I guess she just attracts a lot more sunlight with that hair, and she is more pale skinned.

What do you do in this situation when you have two actor's of two different exposure levels to the camera?

Also, say I use a diffuser of some sort. Is the person holding the diffuser suppose to walk alongside with the two actors, walking? For the close ups it will work, but for a far away mastershot, it will not, and you want the shots to match, so I should only use a diffuser for all the shots, or none, right? Otherwise there will not be a match. I also have to be mindful of the audience seeing the movement of the diffuser, by the shadow pattern it creates around the actors, as oppose to the brighter sun in the background, and foreground.

Also the sun does go behind the clouds a lot. In this case, I have to expose more for a cloudy day, compared to a sunny, but it goes from sunny to cloudy constantly, where I live around this time now. So I don't want to have to cut and do a retake everytime the sun goes behinds clouds and it gets darker. Any thoughts on this one as well?

Thanks.
 
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Light skin color reflect more light than dark skin. I don't think that even low end DSLR should not be able to capture both a dark skin and light color,unless it is super extreme - really black skin and really pale almost white skin of the other actor.
If you need a bigger diffuser you can choose to use either 6x6,8x8,12x12 or 20x20 depending on your need.
Than either pick a darker background so the light loss from diffusion balances out or suplement the needed light with reflectors or lamps.
Good planning on when to shoot masters and when to do close ups are is crucial.
Take a look at Mud and notice how non continuity lighting is not too distracting for the story.
 
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Okay thanks. I want to do a walk and talk scene though, so the background changes as the actors, walk, and if they walk in between two buildings, the sunlight will shine through the path in between the two buildings, and overexpose one all of a sudden. I can expose it, so that she is not overexposed, but then he looks underexposed.

Another thing I have learned is, is that even if I do not overexpose her, the camera still looks overexposed, in the viewscreen. Her face shows up white and blown out looking, but then when I look at the footage on the computer later, it's fine.

So my viewscreen is showing me something that isn't so. Could be the contrast is pushed to high in the screen, compared to in camera, and that could make the image look blown out in the brighter areas. Can I reduce the viewscreens contrast, without affecting the image? As far as I know, I can only adjust the screen's brightness and that's it.

But even if I fixed that problem that still doesn't solve how one actor is overexposed compared to another. I will keep working on it. Can I fix the contrast in the screen though?
 
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Darker skin needs more light than lighter skin for the same exposure.

Get someone to hold a white bead/poly board to reflect onto the darker skinned actor.
 
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Okay thanks. I will. For the close ups it is do-able, just trying to get it to match the mastershot. This is for a different person, this project, and they want the option of having a whole take done, with both people in, so that's a long walk and talk shot, having to expose for two people.
 
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Well if you have black and white under the same light, white will reflect lets say 2 stops more than key while black will reflect 2 stops less,you would still expose at key and render both colors correctly. Wouldn't the same logic apply to dark/white skin? Or are you talking about extreme cases when one of the tones clips/loses details?
 
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I mean that the dark person is coming out pretty dark. If that is okay with the audience, then it's okay with me. It just looks like they are in shade when they are not compared to the more white woman who comes out overexposed, if I am not careful by comparison. It's mostly her blonde hair that comes out overexposed. So for the master I will expose for the hair, and just let whatever else be darker.
 
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Okay thanks. Actually I was watching The Godfather, and I was surprised to see how much of the outdoor photography was overexposed. Some shots in Skyfall are like that too, but The Godfather is much more. If that kind of overexposing is acceptable, than I guess there is no real problem then, and I just have to choose at, what point it looks the best or most acceptable.
 
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When lighting two subjects who appear together and have wildly different skin tones, you generally light to get proper exposure on the subject with the darker skin tone...then use a light modification device (cutter, net, etc.) to reduce the light on the lighter-toned subject.

Hope that helps.
 
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Yep thanks. But that seems to work more for close up shots, and if the director tells you that she wants to shoot a far away master of the whole scene to give a certain style, those modification devices do not have that far of range it seems.
 
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