Taking Pictures of Dark Complexioned Subjects

[Croasdail]

Not sure this is the right place to post this - but lets give it a try. I have been in photography now for about 27 years. Just recently though I started shooting mostly sports - have only been doing so seriously a little less then a year. This fall I will be shooting for what has been historically a black university. An issue I have run into with the other schools is dialing in the correct exposure for darker complexioned subjects. If I use standard metering, I loose a lot of the facial detail. Since 90% of the student body is of African American decent, I want to make sure I shoot it right as I can't afford the time to manually go in and correct each and every image. I was hoping there was an exposure compensation I can use - like overexposing by a 1/3rd. I normally hate overexposing - preferring to error to the side of under exposure. Again - most of these sports - beginning with football - will be late afternoon saturday games ending under the lights. Any suggestions you can offer up would be appreciated.

[PhotosGuy]

I's take a gray card reading, see how the needle compares to a reading off the grass on the field. Then I'd shoot on "M" & use RAW to make minor corrections needed in post processing.
Re: "I want to make sure I shoot it right as I can't afford the time to manually go in and correct each and every image.", RSE, & some other RAW processors, allow applying correction of one image to a group of others.
When it gets darker, a bit of flash fill will help.

[Longwatcher]

I am not the best on this topic as far as what setting you actually should use, but 1/3 to 1/2 of an F-stop sounds about right for average toned African-Americans I photograph to get results. I like taking pictures of different races (plus I live in a fairly homogenous location) and found I need different settings for each one. If they are very dark you may need to go a full stop.

I will try to pay attention this weekend when I do my next model shoot. It should be interesting as I have one fair-skinned caucasion and one average-toned black model to work with, which always makes things complicated. But my studio results may not help when you are shooting sports.

[d'homme]

Are these action shots or posed team shots? If you can spot meter, get a reading off the face as your starting point. That's what I do. When I was using film, when I had prints made for weddings or banquets, I'd tell them to "exposure for the complexion." Prints always came out perfectly. If you can get a test shot off before hand, try it. Don't guess if you don't have to. I'm black, and I do a lot of events with black folk in attendence. I'm always concerned with skin complexion and the lightness of the clothes when shooting on auto.

[PhotosGuy]

Afterthought: Heres a link to my experience in a similar situation to what you described:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?p=587218#post587218

(Yeah, I know the 5% crops aren't all that sharp!) ;)

And here's a shot with flash fill (also cropped):

[Croasdail]

Thanks everyone. I am going to do a little of all your suggestions - I went and got a spot meter today - and I am going to ask to shoot a couple practices, just to make sure on game day I am all setup. Thanks again for commenting.