Photographing people with dark skin and light skin

[Melanie2010]

I really appreciate all of the help I have gotten from this website.

I have been asked to photograph people at my workplace and I am trying to anticipate problems I think I will run into in the future.

One thing I have wondered, is how do I photograph an African American with dark skin alongside with a fair skinned white person?

I have a Canon Xti. I am fairly new to photographing people and all of these shots will be done indoors with no natural light.

I have gotten some great advice about using a business card as a bounce for my flash, and I am going to use that for my next photograph, which is coming up next week.

I was not sure how to get a good shot of people with such different skin tones.

Thanks so much!!
Mel

[sybren]

The easiest way: manual exposure and a grey card. Use the grey card to get a correct exposure, then don't change it. If you set the camera to one of the (semi)automatic modes it'll adjust for whatever skintone you have in front of you, and most likely over-expose dark skin and under-expose light skin. With manual mode you'll get consistent shots the entire day. Same goes for the flash - set it to manual, work out a decent exposure, then just shoot the entire day with that setting without worrying

[LeeR]

I agree with Sybren and would add two things, maybe three. White skin is about a stop above middle gray, so if you don't have a gray card, expose for the white skin plus 1 stop. Make sure you have plenty of light; shadows on dark skin are absolutely unforgiving. Get as much natural fill as you can.
The business card idea is OK. It's certainly better than bounce only, but I saw in another forum where a guy wrapped some bubblewrap around his flash so it extended about three inches beyond the flash head with some amazing results. He still aimed it to bounce, but the bubblewrap diffused enough of the light to do a great job with fill while eliminating harsh shadows.

[sybren]

The bubblewrap idea sounds pretty good. I wouldn't use a business card with your popup flash, unless you have a really low, really white ceiling. Otherwise you'll just be annoyed by the long recycle time of your flash. Besides, I don't think the popup flash can be set to manual so will cause inconsistent lighting.

[Melanie2010]

Thank you all so much!
I love the bubble wrap idea. I am going to have to give it a try.

I appreciate everything. I have gotten some great ideas from this site.

Mel