Dark-skinned subject

Gregory Blank writes:

Show people MF
imagery beside 35mm and digital at an equal price and most I guarantee
will choose the MF shots.

No doubt ... but digital wedding photographers take care not to do that.

A lot of photographers are actually charging more for the digital
weddings than 35mm.

The wonders of media hype.

Digital is whole nother ball of
wax which allows all kinds of less than qualified people to participate
in wedding photography that really just don't belong. IMOP.

This could be said of every technical change in photography that makes
things easier.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

Gregory Blank writes:

Show people MF
imagery beside 35mm and digital at an equal price and most I guarantee
will choose the MF shots.

No doubt ... but digital wedding photographers take care not to do that.

A lot of photographers are actually charging more for the digital
weddings than 35mm.

The wonders of media hype.

Digital is whole nother ball of
wax which allows all kinds of less than qualified people to participate
in wedding photography that really just don't belong. IMOP.

This could be said of every technical change in photography that makes
things easier.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

In article ,
Mxsmanic wrote:

Digital is whole nother ball of
wax which allows all kinds of less than qualified people to participate
in wedding photography that really just don't belong. IMOP.

This could be said of every technical change in photography that makes
things easier.

Many of the things involved in film photo can be applied to digital
capture, although there is IMOP a nominal amount of easier involved with
digital (no loading film being the easiest part/changing asa).

I find myself somewaht distracted in taking digital....making sure the
exposures are spot on for reproduction. Because we are shooting fine
jpeg not raw, one must have very accurate exposures with flash and
ambient outdoors (Its like shooting blasted slides at the wedding not
CN). I find the camera to be a lot less intuitive especially outdoors
than film. Film is actually less critical even using 100 asa film.

--
LF Website @ http://members.verizon.net/~gregoryblank

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong,
is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."--Theodore Roosevelt, May 7, 1918

I've been shooting for a long time, but suddenly I find myself facing
an unfamiliar situation, and I could use some advice. I happen to live in
a part of the country that has very few black people. Lots of Latinos and
Polynesians, but very few black. I have been booked to shoot a wedding at
which the groom is a very dark-skinned African. (No, he's not
African-American. He's from Ghana.) And I'm told he has very dark skin.
Same presumably goes for his family.
The bride will be wearing white, which means the range between her
dress and the groom's skin tone could be pretty significant.
I will be using Nikon 8008 and/or N90 cameras, in program mode, with
flash. I generally shoot Portra, with a rated ISO of 160, but I set the
camera for 100.
So what's the best course of action? Wash out the whites to get the
dark skin tones? Keep the whites and risk losing the groom's face? Just
let the computer decide for me? Any wisdom from someone who's handled
this kind of shoot would be greatly appreciated.

black skin tones reveal bad lighting much more than white skin does.

A well exposed wedding photo should be able to show detail in both the
white wedding dress and the black tux.

go grab a catalog with shots of black purses and shoes, leather jackets. Do
they screw up the exposure (would be evident in the surrounding details) do
the models look blown out, does the background look fried compared to the
shot with the white shoes? usually not.

Mxsmanic writes:

Randall Ainsworth writes:

Mmmm...35mm weddings.

Some people are making money shooting weddings digitally, so shooting
35mm is probably overkill.

6MP is better for a wedding than any 35mm film I've used. Weddings
aren't about resolution, they're about *smoothness*. Mostly I use
*both*, myself -- mostly because I don't have a second digital body,
and also because the TTL flash works much better with film than with
digital (my S2 not supporting the newer flash automation scheme that
handles that).
--
David Dyer-Bennet, , http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
RKBA: http://noguns-nomoney.com/ http://www.dd-b.net/carry/
Pics: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/ http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/
Dragaera/Steven Brust: http://dragaera.info/

In article ,
says...
In article ,
wrote:

I've been shooting for a long time, but suddenly I find myself facing
an unfamiliar situation, and I could use some advice. I happen to live in
a part of the country that has very few black people. Lots of Latinos and
Polynesians, but very few black. I have been booked to shoot a wedding at
which the groom is a very dark-skinned African. (No, he's not
African-American. He's from Ghana.) And I'm told he has very dark skin.
Same presumably goes for his family.
The bride will be wearing white, which means the range between her
dress and the groom's skin tone could be pretty significant.
I will be using Nikon 8008 and/or N90 cameras, in program mode, with
flash. I generally shoot Portra, with a rated ISO of 160, but I set the
camera for 100.
So what's the best course of action? Wash out the whites to get the
dark skin tones? Keep the whites and risk losing the groom's face? Just
let the computer decide for me? Any wisdom from someone who's handled
this kind of shoot would be greatly appreciated.

Cue the fossil...

Mmmm...35mm weddings.

Learn photography and let someone else do the wedding.

Right on time. Learn to work that 10D yet?

Marc

In article ,
says...
In article ,
wrote:

I've been shooting for a long time, but suddenly I find myself facing
an unfamiliar situation, and I could use some advice. I happen to live in
a part of the country that has very few black people. Lots of Latinos and
Polynesians, but very few black. I have been booked to shoot a wedding at
which the groom is a very dark-skinned African. (No, he's not
African-American. He's from Ghana.) And I'm told he has very dark skin.
Same presumably goes for his family.
The bride will be wearing white, which means the range between her
dress and the groom's skin tone could be pretty significant.
I will be using Nikon 8008 and/or N90 cameras, in program mode, with
flash. I generally shoot Portra, with a rated ISO of 160, but I set the
camera for 100.
So what's the best course of action? Wash out the whites to get the
dark skin tones? Keep the whites and risk losing the groom's face? Just
let the computer decide for me? Any wisdom from someone who's handled
this kind of shoot would be greatly appreciated.

Cue the fossil...

Mmmm...35mm weddings.

Learn photography and let someone else do the wedding.

Right on time. Learn to work that 10D yet?

Marc

Mxsmanic wrote:

Expose everything normally. Dark skin in white clothing is no different
from pale skin in black clothing.

The only difference I've ever noticed is that black skin tends to
benefit from diffuse lighting, and pale skin tends to benefit from more
directional sources. But you won't have much control over that outside
a studio.

Hmmm. Ten responses, one of which actually answers the question.
Thank you Mxsmanic. You are clearly a skilled photographer, an
educated person, and a grown-up. A combination of attributes all the more
valuable on Usenet because of its rarity.
Incidentally, for anyone reading in due to interest in the original
topic, a Google search (terms: photographing dark skin, IIRC) took me to
a discussion group on a page used mostly by professional
cinematographers. They seconded Mxsmanic's advice. And they did it
without the childishness of all the posts here except his.
The wedding, incidentally, went very well. I did decide to open the
shutter an extra half-stop on some shots because not only the bride, but
the groom as well, wore white. The rest of the Ghanians in attendance
were all wearing either dark "Regis look" western clothing, or traditional
garb that was a feast for the camera. I didn't worry about latitude at
all with them.
Finally, a word to everybody except Mxsmanic. The small but sincere
photo studio I work for has been in business for a quarter of a century,
and done thousands of weddings. (I'm the neophyte, with only about 250
under my belt.) And we've done every one of them in 35mm. In all that
time, we have never spent a dime on any form of promotion or advertising
other than business cards. Word of mouth keeps us hopping without it. I
know that it's tough for you to believe that you don't know everything, or
that your way of doing things isn't the only way. But it's so none the
less.
Put another way, excuse me if I don't really care how big your cameras
are or how far you can **** with them.

Mxsmanic wrote:

Expose everything normally. Dark skin in white clothing is no different
from pale skin in black clothing.

The only difference I've ever noticed is that black skin tends to
benefit from diffuse lighting, and pale skin tends to benefit from more
directional sources. But you won't have much control over that outside
a studio.

Hmmm. Ten responses, one of which actually answers the question.
Thank you Mxsmanic. You are clearly a skilled photographer, an
educated person, and a grown-up. A combination of attributes all the more
valuable on Usenet because of its rarity.
Incidentally, for anyone reading in due to interest in the original
topic, a Google search (terms: photographing dark skin, IIRC) took me to
a discussion group on a page used mostly by professional
cinematographers. They seconded Mxsmanic's advice. And they did it
without the childishness of all the posts here except his.
The wedding, incidentally, went very well. I did decide to open the
shutter an extra half-stop on some shots because not only the bride, but
the groom as well, wore white. The rest of the Ghanians in attendance
were all wearing either dark "Regis look" western clothing, or traditional
garb that was a feast for the camera. I didn't worry about latitude at
all with them.
Finally, a word to everybody except Mxsmanic. The small but sincere
photo studio I work for has been in business for a quarter of a century,
and done thousands of weddings. (I'm the neophyte, with only about 250
under my belt.) And we've done every one of them in 35mm. In all that
time, we have never spent a dime on any form of promotion or advertising
other than business cards. Word of mouth keeps us hopping without it. I
know that it's tough for you to believe that you don't know everything, or
that your way of doing things isn't the only way. But it's so none the
less.
Put another way, excuse me if I don't really care how big your cameras
are or how far you can **** with them.

In article ,
wrote:

Finally, a word to everybody except Mxsmanic. The small but sincere
photo studio I work for has been in business for a quarter of a century,
and done thousands of weddings. (I'm the neophyte, with only about 250
under my belt.) And we've done every one of them in 35mm. In all that
time, we have never spent a dime on any form of promotion or advertising
other than business cards. Word of mouth keeps us hopping without it. I
know that it's tough for you to believe that you don't know everything, or
that your way of doing things isn't the only way. But it's so none the
less.
Put another way, excuse me if I don't really care how big your cameras
are or how far you can **** with them.

Any way you cut it, 35mm weddings are amateurish.