portrait exposure

Hi there,

 

I know you must be tired of lenses about portrait lighting or

portrait lenses, and all that, so I'll try to keep it short and

specific.

 

When spotmetering for caucasian skin, is that metering result

usually used as Zone V? (so no exposure adjustments)? I read

somewhere you'd had to make a two-stop adjustment from that reading,

but I can't remember if it were +2 or -2. Then again, normal skin

looks like it should be mid-grey to me (~18%).

 

The same question, now for studio strobes, metered with an incident

flash meter, very near the skin. Same exposure?

 

I'm not talking about any special effects here, just regular,

standard, mid-key lighting for facial portraits. I have a 'shoot'

coming up (just getting to use a friend's studio, with another

friend as model), and it's my first time, while the end results are

not that important, I'd like to waste as little as film and time as

possible by exposing half my frames the wrong way :) (using film, I

can only check after the film is developed, of course).

 

Thanks.

Hello Jonas,

 

I reckon it depends on what you mean by "Caucasian skin". Here in Northern Ireland, many people would have pale skin and this would correspond to zone VI - in other words one stop brighter than zone V (mid-grey). So you would meter from the face and open up a stop. Somebody with a fake (or even real) tan might have skin which would fall on zone V, thus needing no compensation when using reflected metering.

 

Of course, if you measure the light *falling* on the subject (ie incident metering using an invercone or similar) none of this zoney compensation is needed.

 

Cheers,

 

Se�n

You answered my questions perfectly.

 

Thanks for the great help!

Fair caucasian skin should be placed in Zone VI, but if the subject is female I would go perhaps to Zone VII.