Best way to photograph black cats?

[Speedster502]

My favourite, and currently only cat is sadly black. She's a lovely cat however because of her fur colour it makes it hard to take photographs of, how would you guys suggest to photograph my cat?

[JayCee Images]

Are you having problems focusing/metering?? What exactly is giving you trouble?

[deci]

Do you have an external flash? If you do then angle it so its pointed straight up. Cut a length of plasticout of a plastic milk container and using elastic bands, fix to the back of the flash, with about 6" sticking above the flash.

Picture would be better >>>>


Arrangement allows a very diffuse effect.

Did this using it

and this

HTH

[Speedster502]

Originally Posted by Jeffro250

Are you having problems focusing/metering?? What exactly is giving you trouble?

Its the camera's metering side which tends to mess up, it tends to blow out the background making the picture looks terribly over exposed.

Originally Posted by deci

Do you have an external flash? If you do then angle it so its pointed straight up. Cut a length of plasticout of a plastic milk container and using elastic bands, fix to the back of the flash, with about 6" sticking above the flash.

Picture would be better >>>>

Fraid not, is there any other way to do it?

[gymell]

You need to underexpose it 1 or 1 1/2 stops.

[deci]

'Fraid I don't know of any, I tried all sorts before I hit on this... Stofen diffusers, tried all different combinations of speed, Aperture, ISO etc, but still she ended up with her either greyish or just a black splodge.

Either that or try to get her to lie in a sunny window (not too difficult with a cat, but practically impossible in England at the moment), where it won't really matter if the background is overexposed provided it is just sky. In fact I find a blown background makes a nice contrast to the black of her fur.

[tiktaalik]

Everything I've read says you've got to throw lots of light on them. It's the reflections off their fur that give them shape. You really need
an external flash for this.

Here's one with my 580EX and a Lumiquest 80/20 with the diffuser panel in front:


This one I was experimenting with one off-camera flash and an umbrella.


I'm still trying (whenever she'll let me get near her with a camera ) but black cats sure are hard to photograph.

[AccordGuy]

And like in tiktaalik's second photo, it's better if you can get the moggy to look away from the camera as otherwise it will squint at the light or get red-eye. One thing with flash though... I have a EX580 and I couldn't use it at all for my previous cat as she could see the pre-flash a fraction of a second before the main flash and so I always got shots of her with her eyes half shut as she'd blink when seeing the pre-flash. An old-school flash with no communication flash or pre-flash for metering or anything clever like that worked better as then she was just surprised by the main flash without blinking. I've known a human subject do the same thing. I couldn't get him to have an ID card photo taken with the flash - eyes half closed every time - even when I threatened him with violence if he blinked ... Had to give up and take the shot with just the office strip lights.

As well as light reflecting off the black fur it's important to get a light background so you can make out the shape. Metering-wise I used to spot meter for the background or foreground and forget the cat as he was black.