Tip on taking fair skin brides

I'm having difficulty to take a snapshot of the brides if her skin tone is milky white and her clothes is white.

I've tried to spot meter her but I can't find anything close to grey scale.

Using even center weight metering doesn't help either.

I found it difficult to do a direct snap in the following condition:-

i) milk white skin tone with white clothes
ii) milk white skin tone with black clothes
iii) milk white skin tone with bright color clothes i.e red/blue

Does multi spot metering will help or the 1dmkII with 63 seg metering would help me taking snap w/o doing EC?

FYI this is taking w/o using flash in outdoor.

I've tried to bracket the shoot in Av mode for up to +-1 but the result is not satisfactory. Please advice.

What happened when you bracketed? Were any close?

My suggestion is to partial/spot meter on white with EC of +1.5-+2.

Can you post an example?

Why is this in small/flash and studio lighting if you're not using flash?

You need more practice working with exposure and metering.

One way I found students understand exposure easier, it to tell them this:

"Forget about whether the object itself is grey, white or black. You're the wizard. You can make any object to be anything you want. Just point the spotmeter at it and dial +2 - it will be white in the picture. If you dial it -2 it will be black. And at EC-0 it will be gray"

So, tell your camera that you want the gown to be white. Point the spotmeter at her dress and dial in +2.

I would not recommend shooting brides if you're unsure of how to expose properly.

Try manual. First set the f-stop & shutter speed you need. Then adjust the ISO. Need an exposure crutch?

This shows how the subject can affect the exposure & why manual keeps me worry free: Post #47

Your camera is seeing the bride's skin and gown as grey,,18% reflectance grey to be exact..Camera meters are calibrated to read 18% reflectance grey..

There are two ways to get around this..

1. Shoot on Manual exposing for the white gown and increase your exposure by about 1 1/2 to 2 stops..Bracketting helps here..

2. The most acurate way to measure your exposure here is to take an incident reading with a handheld exposure meter..An incident reading will measure the light falling on the subject not the light being reflected..

+1 yogestee.
I have been using the incident meter lately.......
My results have improved dramatically.
Less variation in post processing if you use manual mode.