Shooting white clothing ?'s

[bjamestown]

James - thank you! Your comment about metering and gray gave me one of thos "ah ha" moments! I've been reading a book : Confused photogrphers guide to spot metering. I had to step away from it for a bit because I hit a block, but this comment helped bring it all together and much clearer! It takes me awhile to catch on sometimes!
Anyway, I went and practiced today and feel MUCH more confident!
Beth

[bjamestown]

Yea! These are SOOC. Lovely props !!!!!! LOL I feel much more comfortable now!

[Jamesc359]

Your welcome.

That's an interesting prop you've got there.

[Choet]

Originally Posted by Jamesc359

No, when you meter off of a specific spot in your image your camera should try to average out the overall luminosity of that area to be gray. The average color of a large white area is of course white. So your camera is going to stop down till that color is gray.

The reason cameras try to expose for an average gray is because that's the overall luminosity that seems to result in the best exposure in most normal lighting conditions.

Practicing is always a good idea IMO. That's always the best way to get in tune with your camera and to really understand how different lighting and camera settings will affect things.

I had a similar problem taking some photos of a friend of my at her wedding. The day was really bright and sunny. I was trying to do spot metering off of her dress and setting the camera to manual, but I just didn't under the concept of adjusting the exposure compensation after wards by 1-1.5 stop. This was a good explanation better than I have read in books.

ta

[Choet]

The question I have refers to a wedding situation. When you have the bride and groom together in the shot and the bride is in white and the groom in black, how do you set your exposure. Normally for the bride you add exposure compensation to avoid underexposure and for the groom you reduce the exposure to avoid over exposure. Do you spot meter of the bride's dress and do no exposure compensation?

[kencaleno]

Originally Posted by Choet

The question I have refers to a wedding situation. When you have the bride and groom together in the shot and the bride is in white and the groom in black, how do you set your exposure. Normally for the bride you add exposure compensation to avoid underexposure and for the groom you reduce the exposure to avoid over exposure. Do you spot meter of the bride's dress and do no exposure compensation?

You use a hand-held flash/exposure meter,and take an incident reading from around the shadow of the brides face back towards the camera position-Because light falling on subjects is constant, you will get a perfect exposure.

(light reflected from various tones will confuse your camera's reflective meter readings)

Regards, Ken

[Choet]

Unfortunately that is something that I don't have yet and I am not sure I could at this point convince my husband to spend more money, however, it is a good point for future reference .