HELP with settings!

[Stina3246]

First off let me say I know this is a HORRIBLE photo and am embarrassed that I took it! At work I am THE ONE people come to for good shots and I've done weddings and events with a lot of success BUT....
Here is the issue. I am often called upon to shoot this type of shot at this time of day at THIS location. None of those can change...it seems special groups ALWAYS want a shot at this location and always show up while the sun is setting behind it!
NOW...I shot 11 photos, one worse the the other. THIS particular shot was taken on AUTO and was the best of the group. I am shooting with a Nikon D-50 with a Tamron 28-80 lens zoomed all the way out. I tried other settings, I tried over exposing the group, I tried underexposing the sky, I tried different shutter speeds and different apertures.
SO if you had to shoot in this identical situation, what settings would you use? I did consider using the Nikon 18-55 lens so I could stand closer and maybe block out more of the sun or even use the external flash to maybe compensate for the horrid sunlight. HELP....'cause I know I'll be shooting in this situation again soon. (Don't worry about the trash can, I can place characters over it or zoom in, just worried about exposure.)


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[autofocus]

Agree, these are, and can be tough shots. When you wind up with that much sky in the shot it'll almost always underexpose the subjects. Do you have a good hot shoe flash? It might have helped if you do have one. I just recently read an article on flash with photo examples, and although I have not tried it yet, it may have worked out well in this type of scenario. You'll have to play with these numbers because I don't remember exactly what was suggested, but basically underexpose your shot by say a stop or so, and bump your flash up a stop or so....this will take a little experimenting first with those settings. By doing this, you'll get better saturation on your sky while your subjects will be well lit by the flash. Actually, I'm looking forward to trying this myself. Hope this helps a little

Vinnie

[SusanH1970]

Interesting tip, Vinnie. I'm going to have to try that and see how it works out. Thanks! Now, just to wait for some sun........

[CiiVii]

I don't know how difficult it would be to put light on a group that large, but I think the idea is to first expose for the background so the sky is not blown out and then use flash for fill.

[Benji]

ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS properly expose the subject. NEVER NEVER NEVER intentionally over or under expose the subject of the image by two or three stops. For this shot I would have used a speedlight (or other flash) as the main light and allowed the ambient light to be the hair and background light. If the background is overexposed darken it later in Photoshop. Few people know what the background is supposed to look like, but they know what their skin should look like. You cannot "fix" skin on people that has been under or over exposed by a couple of stops and expect it to look right.

White skies. Some internet "expert" at some time proclaimed that the sky is blue, and the urban legend took off. So ever since then if you have a white sky you obviously overexposed it (they call it "blown out" because it makes them sound like they know what they are talking about) but is it actually blown out? Is the entire sky blue all day long? To our eyes that can see 1.4 million colors, yes. To a camera that can record about 40 colors the only sky that is blue all the time during the day is the north sky (when there are no clouds.) The east sky is blue in the afternoon only, the west sky is blue in the morning only and the south sky is never blue (assuming no clouds.)

Benji

[autofocus]

Benji, you just gave me the blues...Benji, if you underexpose in camera by a stop, and overexpose your speedlite by a stop, shouldn't that still yield acceptable skin tones?...I've not tried it, but it seems like it would balance the light OK (but still to be empirically proven)

[Stina3246]

Originally Posted by Benji

ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS properly expose the subject. NEVER NEVER NEVER intentionally over or under expose the subject of the image by two or three stops. For this shot I would have used a speedlight (or other flash) as the main light and allowed the ambient light to be the hair and background light. If the background is overexposed darken it later in Photoshop. Few people know what the background is supposed to look like, but they know what their skin should look like. You cannot "fix" skin on people that has been under or over exposed by a couple of stops and expect it to look right.

White skies. Some internet "expert" at some time proclaimed that the sky is blue, and the urban legend took off. So ever since then if you have a white sky you obviously overexposed it (they call it "blown out" because it makes them sound like they know what they are talking about) but is it actually blown out? Is the entire sky blue all day long? To our eyes that can see 1.4 million colors, yes. To a camera that can record about 40 colors the only sky that is blue all the time during the day is the north sky (when there are no clouds.) The east sky is blue in the afternoon only, the west sky is blue in the morning only and the south sky is never blue (assuming no clouds.)

Benji

Thanks for the tips guys. I did forget to mention that the ONLY editing I can do at work is to either darken or lighten the photo, and crop it. We do not have photoshop, or any other editing program on our system. Mainly we shoot and sell, that's it.
I KNEW I should have brought the speed light! Next time I will. I had considered it for this shoot but then thought to my self, NAH it's so bright out right now anyway.....

[Benji]

Originally Posted by auto-focus

Benji, you just gave me the blues...Benji, if you underexpose in camera by a stop, and overexpose your speedlite by a stop, shouldn't that still yield acceptable skin tones?...I've not tried it, but it seems like it would balance the light OK (but still to be empirically proven)

It depends. Exactly how did you underexpose? If by the shutter speed you may be OK but if you underexposed by using the aperture you will still be underexposed because the exposure when using flash is controlled by the aperture.

The best way to handle this is to properly expose the subject's faces and if you are under equipped allow the background to do what it wants to do.

Benji

[jdepould]

The entire point of fill flash is to give your main subject the proper exposure, while allowing the background to go wherever you want to put it. So flash and burn (underexposing for ambient, compensating with artificial) wouldn't lead to abnormal skin tones.

[autofocus]

Originally Posted by jdepould

The entire point of fill flash is to give your main subject the proper exposure, while allowing the background to go wherever you want to put it. So flash and burn (underexposing for ambient, compensating with artificial) wouldn't lead to abnormal skin tones.

So basically what you are saying is that the premise of underexposing with the shutter to saturate the ambient while compensating with the flash bumped up is sound. As I stated above, I've yet to try it, but will certainly want to give it go. Thanks Jamie