One More Question About Metering

[Nick Keller]

This is more about exposure. But what is the best way to handle darker skinned actors/actresses?

If your purposely underexposing them for an effect (moonlight, etc) and reflected they are already 2 stops under the reading for the key light does that mean you don't underexpose?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Basically, yes, you can't underexpose dark skin much before you drop off too much in shadow detail. But it also depends on the reflectivity of the skin and how much you can get a highlight to reflect in it.

Think of a scenario where you would be lighting a black shiny car at night. You reflect a big soft source off of the body and your incident meter says it is way too underexposed, but it looks correctly exposed on film, because essentially you are shooting the reflection of a white light in the surface of car, not so much car itself.

So while generally you wouldn't underexpose dark skin by much, you may find in some dark situations that you are capturing more detail than you thought because of the way the light is reflecting off of the skin. But to be safe, don't underexpose too much anyway...