Photographing dark skin/black clothes in the club

Alright guys,

I was at a club last night doing a spot of photography for my mates who were performing, however i have noticed that when i use my 24-70mm L, if im taking a pic of a dark skined person or one wearing black clothes; pics always come out more or less under exposed, flash doesnt expose properly. However when using my 70-200mm L, this is fine. I am using 580EX flashes on both cameras, 5D + 24-70mm and 40D + 70-200mm.

Settings are manual at around iso 800, 1/50 - 1/25 and F2/8 - F4, and flash settings left at ETTL on 0 - +2/3. This is more or less bounced directly to the ceiling. Here are some examples to show... can anyone please explain what is happening here, is there something wrong with how I shoot?

1. 5D + 24-70mm

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Spot metering would be ideal for this. Ive not had this problem, before with a 24-70 on a 400D. Look like two totally diff venues, real odd why what would happen. You tried to recreate the same result at home?

This is deffo the same club, you can see the DJ booth behind them, this is strange , oh another thing is i have the hood on both lenses, not sure if that can cause an issue?

Nah not yet, i have been advised to try this, but not had chance yet.

To be fair, my metering is set to evaluative is it? the one with the circle and dot on both cameras. But i have set the exposure to manual.

Two things to check:

If you have flash exposure compensation set on the camera, it will override anything set on the flash itself. Do you have any negative flash EC set on the camera?

You may not be getting a proper bounce. Is the ceiling black and high? Is the flash head angled correctly?

Yella Fella wrote in post #5538083
This is deffo the same club, you can see the DJ booth behind them, this is strange , oh another thing is i have the hood on both lenses, not sure if that can cause an issue?

Nah not yet, i have been advised to try this, but not had chance yet.

To be fair, my metering is set to evaluative is it? the one with the circle and dot on both cameras. But i have set the exposure to manual.

That can be used but spot metering is just a filled central dot.

Bearmann wrote in post #5538532
Two things to check:

If you have flash exposure compensation set on the camera, it will override anything set on the flash itself. Do you have any negative flash EC set on the camera?

You may not be getting a proper bounce. Is the ceiling black and high? Is the flash head angled correctly?

well 5D doesnt have any internal flash exposure compensation like compared to my 40D as it has inbuilt flash too. I thought external flash guns settings overide the internal ones?

thing is, this same set up is ok for fair skinned people and for say white clothing. But for my 40D and 70-200mm setup as you can see in the pics above, its fine

I have not yet shot enough flash in a variety of circumstances with my 40D, compared to my experiences with 20D. But preliminary impression is that I had to work harder to not underexpose shots with the 20D and needing to crank in some FEC almost all the time, and more shots are coming out with correct exposure yet without FEC with the 40D ! I wonder if the Canon flash engineers finally figured out how to do flash more correctly?!

Yella Fella wrote in post #5538579
I thought external flash guns settings overide the internal ones?

Whoops! You are correct. My error.

The 5D 24-70 combo is probably much closer to the performer. Make sure your flash is not hitting the ceiling behind or above the performer, i.e. make sure it's angled correctly. How does it go? Angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection?

it was all directly above, same for my 40D and 70-200 setup, proper weird why it does this

See post #3
Tips for Xmas Ball Please

PhotosGuy wrote in post #5540223
See post #3
Tips for Xmas Ball Please

Hey frank, thanks for the link, only had a quick view but will have a proper read later as have a late wedding to shoot in a few hours.

This issue only seems to be the case with people with dark skin and clothes. I also noticed that it seems to be with portrait mode rather than landscape too. I currently almost always shoot at around iso800 and 1/50th and f2.8/4 with ETTL flash. Just wondering if its my settings or something

You might want to open up a bit for the darker skin tones, but generally the exposure should be the same for black/white/green*? Test. Standardize. Shoot RAW for minor tweaks.

"green*" = late at the reception.

Check the flash confirmation light immediately after the photo is taken to see if an adequate flash was administered. Perhaps the batteries in the 5D flash are weak. You might try switching the flash units between the two cameras to see if the problem is transfered to the 40D.

i checked all the equipment and its fine... im not sure if its cos of the 5D or not? but noticed that it tends to happen with the 5D and 24-70 lens combo... even with daylight, it tends to underexpose really badly

the settings on my camera and flash set up was the same as my 40D and 70-200mm combo as shown above, just no idea why its so badly performing on the 5D