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Position:Home>Visual Arts> Question about camera light meters?Question: Question about camera light meters!? How come when you use the matrix metering or even a spot metering on someone with darker skin, the camera messes up the whole exposure!. Usually when I photograph someone with a dark to very dark complexion, the meter somehow makes the whole picture underexposed!. When I photograph someone with fair to olive skin, I usually get a more accurate exposure!.
What is this phenomenon!?Www@QuestionHome@Com Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: You need to do one of two things!. Get an ambient light meter to accurately meter at the person's face, (you aim the meter back at the camera and take a reading of the light falling on the subject)!. Or!.!.!. get a large grey card, (these are precision metering cards), and place it at the face of the person!. You then move in close enough so the entire grey card fills the frame of your camera!. Take an exposure reading off the grey card, then place these settings manually into your camera!. The above methods work well, but if you understand how a camera meter works, you can do well without them!. All camera meters are trying to balance a scene to 18% grey!. By fully understanding this, you can easily make adjustments to your exposure to get much closer to correct!.!.!. but ONLY if you use a spot meter in your camera!. You must be able to recognize how far away from 18% grey your subject is!. If the subject is darker, but not fully black, you set your exposure compensation to -1!. If the subject is black, you set exposure compensation to -2!. If the subject is brighter than grey, but not fully white, you can set exposure compensation to +1!. If the subject is fully white, you will need to increase exposure by +2!. This is a simplified Ansel Adams Zone System!. Matriix metering simply looks at an entire scene and tries to balance the entire scene to 18% grey!. If all aspects in the scene are close to the same brightness, it will do pretty well, but if you have major contrasts in the scene, there will usually always be exposure issues like you are seeing!. So either use a light meter, a grey card, or learn to use the spot meter function in your camera and how to use exposure compensation depending on if the subject is darker or lighter than middle grey!. steveWww@QuestionHome@Com In this instance, you need to use an incident light meter as the meter that is used by your camera measures reflected light!. An incident meter measures the amount of light falling on your subject and not the light reflected by it!. A person of darker skin will reflect less light than one of lighter skin!. Your camera's [reflected] light meter is being tricked out!. You can either use a handheld incident light meter, seperate from your camera's light meter, or dial in some exposure compensation to get the rigth exposure!.Www@QuestionHome@Com Go to http://www!.shutterbug!.com and do a search for 'photographing black people' and read the article by Monte Zucker!. Mr!. Zucker was a Master Portrait Photographer and his article should be of help to you!.Www@QuestionHome@Com |