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White Balance
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Hi all, I have a long burning question, how do you avoid burning out a wedding dress when taking shots i.e, loosing all the detail and just seeing white, either outside or inside. I use a canon 5d mkII with a 580 EXII speedlight, but I am concerned about this issue. thanks in advance
Hi F stop. Your meter basically thinks white is mid grey and black is mid grey. If you meter for the dress itself, the camera will under expose the shot to turn the white into grey. If you meter for something black, your camera will over expose to turn the black into grey. If you meter for a mid tone, ie flesh, grey clothing, concrete etc (so longas it is in the same lighting as the dress) The meter should give a good exposure keeping detail in the dress. Kodak used to produce “grey cards” which were great for this, but unfortunately, I believe they have stopped producing them. So, if you meter using anything with a mid grey tone your exposures should be ok. Slight adjustments could be done in photoshop afterwards if required.
Thanks for that, can you tell me an example, for instance if I am taking a family shot in a park, or a shot of the bride and groom, what would you suggest I meter of to achieve that correct exposure, I am sorry but I am relativly new to this issue and cant grasp it as of yet, thanks for ypur help
Also factor how dominant the white (or black) is as a proprtion of the scene. If the bride is taking up most of the screen, then overexposing will be necessary. If it is a group scene, and the whiteness of the dress is less dominant, you will just have to judge from the histogram. Also consider your exposure mode, you may want to use spot metering, to meter off a midtone before shooting.
Probably the best thing to do is to practice with a white sheet and learn how camera works in different situations and settings.
For close up work, use of the flash can be very beneficial, but prone to blowing details – for me, this is the hardest to master so you know what to do in any situation – but play around on your own time before doing a wedding!
I’d agree with Brendan. Practice is the best thing. Understanding how the meter works can be tricky and different scenes may benefit from using different metering modes. Spot metering is very good for precise metering of a small part of a scene, but is probably the worst to use if you are unsure how to use it. The type of scene may also dictate the metering mode to use. For a general scene, centre weighted average mode will probably be fine, so long as neither black or white dominates the scene. Partial metering is also good to use as the actual lighting falling on your subject will effect the exposure. A person standing under the shade of a tree on a sunny day for example, will have a different reading to a person standing in bright sunlight, so depending on which person is important in the shot will determine who you meter for. If you meter for the person under the tree, the other person will be over exposed and if you meter for the person in the sunlight, the person in the shade will be under exposed. By taking a reading from both and basically splitting the difference between both, would give you an average reading. It’s good practice to try to visualise the scene in B&W. This will give you a good idea of what to use when metering. You are looking for something that will look mid grey in the shot (ie grass which is not in bright sunlight). Hope this is of some help to you.
Why not just use a hand held meter and just take an incident meter reading from the dress. If you shoot digital check the right hand side of the histogram and try to work out where the dress is on it, shoot raw then to fine tune….
Dont know much about people photography but that’s what I would do and reckon I would not be to far off the mark…
M
Thanks guys, aaaahhhhhh, all this is crazy ha ha, If I buy a grey card and compose my shot, then half press the shutter release pointing the lens at the grey card ?, this is where I get lost, if I half press the button is the camera not focusing on the card and if so how do I refocus on the shot without interfearing with the balance. ?
You need to use the exposure lock button, marked *
Have a look at your camera manual…
Don’t forget that it is unlikely that you can use a grey card when shooting a wedding. Get to know your camera first!
While this product might be hard to use at a wedding every digital photographer should have one.
http://www.datacolor.eu/en/products/color-balancing/spydercube/index.html
€59.95 and in stock
thats a very cool product
just watch the simple video online
its very clever for what it is
Spot meter off the dress, an area with some detail, and increase by 1 2/3 stops. Reasonably quick and works for me.
Padraig wrote:
Spot meter off the dress, an area with some detail, and increase by 1 2/3 stops. Reasonably quick and works for me.
Perfect advice, providing of course that the bride is wearing white… :)
Seriously though, I know a wedding is the union of two people, but when it comes
to the photographs, you’ve got to consider the bride as the the most important
person to get right in the pictures. Just like Padraig said, use spot metering to find
the brightest spot on the dress and overexpose by a couple of stops, your whites
will be as white as they should be…
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