exposer considerations for people with dark skin

pfriesen

New member
I'm moving out with a few fellow cinematographers here in Miami to shoot some tests of various film stocks (some of Kodak's new Vision2 stocks as well as short ends of Fuji) on Super16 with, Arri SR2 Camera and a small tungesten and 2x1200W HMI units. CONTINENTAL Labs requested from us to do some specific stuff for them and we get in return some film stock and Post Work (development, color timing).
For the following scene I would ask all of you for your thoughts, considerations, experiences:

I'm going to shoot a black woman (very black) in a white marble (almost pure white with slight grey texture) bath room with glass doors. It is supposed to be a daytime scene and I'm not so sure yet what the action of the "black beauty" in the whole thing will be but I'm sure we will come up with something.
- Anyways, what expiriences do u guys have with shooting black people?
- What lighting ratios u think would be appropriate between the brightest parts on the white marble and the black skin?
- How would you compensate your incident/spot meter reading for black skin (for what skin tones; on what film stock)?
- Has anyone of u experimented with how black skin tones change with different color temperatured light (differently gelled) lights?
- Can u recommend any filters (e.g. BlackProMist - would most likely be not so good with all that white marble i guess) which would help me in this situation?
-etc.

A lot of questions I know.
Thanks for all your thoughts, ideas, sharing of knowledge!
If anyone wants to know or see later how all our tests turn out write me an email. We are gonna shoot that stuff June 27th to 29th and Post Work should be done at latest a week after that.


Philipp
 
Well I don't really handle dark skin tones hugely differently than lighter ones.

What I like to do is have makeup add moisturizer on the darker skin, this builds up reflectance in the skin. Then, I take a large piece of white show card and shoot a skrimed down unit into the card. It is the same principle as an eye light. The card does not add to the exposure, it is just a white object for the skin to reflect.

This method is good for very dark skin tones. For lighter black skin, I sometimes use a slightly warmer light, and don't do much else.

Black skin has tons of variations, thus there is not one solution that works better than another.

I find a lot of black skin has a large amount of blue in it, thus I sometimes add a warmer light to counter act this.


Kevin Zanit

P.S. The skin reflectance trick is not my idea, it was Conie Hall's . . . not trying to take credit for his brilliant idea.
 

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