outdoor shoot

--

Go to a camera shop and ask for an 18% gray card. Kodak, among others, make them to a high degree of precision. They are printed at 100% using gray ink, and there is no half-toning or screening as you would have with a printer at home. They do this because even a little variation in dot gain would ruin the accuracy.

The ink color is also dead neutral, and if you photograph the gray card in one image you can use it for color correction for all shots taken with that setup.

But if you are shooting with a model, you may not really need one. Personally, for portraiture, I prefer an incident light meter, which reads the light reaching the subject rather than reading the light reflecting off of it. But a gray card is a lot cheaper than an incident meter if you don't have one. Make sure you have the model hold the gray card at her face, and then meter from that, coming however close you need to to meter only the gray card in Partial mode.

You can deal with harsh lights using a scrim and a reflector. A scrim is a big, translucent sheet hanging from a frame just outside the image. The model is in the shadow of it, but it allows a lot of diffuse light to pass through it. Then, you can use a reflecting panel to add fill light. Probably any cheap (and therefore thin) white bedsheet will do for a scrim in sunny conditions, if you can rig up something for it to hang on, and white foam-core boards make good reflectors. Depending on the effect you want, you may not need the scrim.

You can also use open shade to find the diffuse light, but be careful of the white balance. Open shade light on a clear day is quite blue.

Rick "always looking for the good light" Denney

--

... there is the option of a graduated filter?

but that too would be limiting,.. very tricky with a model.

This is where the digital aspect can really come into it's own.
Will you be using a tripod? It makes the following idea easier.
When shooting I will assume that you'll be in manual mode, as you are metering from grey card - also makes it easier.
If you take two shots each time, one exposed for the model and one exposed for the sky, you can then use photoshop to combine the images. This would allow you to keep the model correctly exposed and have your (hopefully) blue sky looking good too.
In manual it is easier as you can just change the shutter speed when switching between model and background exposures.

I have just tried this method after reading a tutorial in practical photography and it works nicely. It is easier with a tripos as you don't have to worry about lining the two images up when you blend them

--

evilenglishman wrote:
nice idea

but....i will be taking at least 500 photos (250 of which will be used) and i dont want to have to do that with each image.
It would be just as quick to take 1 nice sky pic and then stick it on all the other photos

In that case, run some experiments with the image exposed for the sky, and use tone curves in Photoshop to bring up the shadows. If you shoot raw, you might be able to pull up the darker tones while keep the sky where you exposed it. You'll still have to fix the images after the fact, but you can put together a batch-process action to do it to the whole batch if you shoot consistently.

There is a ton of information in the shadows of a digital image, but once the highlights are blown out they are gone forever. The trick will be to avoid posterization in the skin tones.

Remember the old adage for film? For negatives it is expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights, and for slides it was expose for the highlights and live with the shadows going to solid black. Digital is the best of both--expose for the highlights and bring up the shadows in Photoshop (the digital equivalent of developing).

Come to think of it, I'd probably handle this with a long extension cord and my Speedotron lights. I'd put a couple of main lights with strong reflectors in approximate line with the sun and run 'em at full power. This might boost the lighting on the subject sufficiently to balance against the sky without it looking unnatural. It takes powerful lights close to the subject.

A polarizer might also help a bit if you are aimed in the right direction.

Rick "who would probably do all this and use the grad filter, too" Denney

--

Using a flash should not 'kill everything' if it is used only to 'fill in' for the shadowy areas. Why not try it?