Please help

A close friend will shortly photograph a wedding of a Black and White couple. She has asked me to find out what techniques she might use to compensate for the differences in skin tones of the couple, the wedding party and of course both families.

She will be shooting groups and individuals outdoors close to sunset. The ceremony and reception will be indoors. She has a Canon XTi. She's planning on purchasing a 580EX2 speedlight to use for this gig.

Recent photos she's taken of couples with markedly differing skin tones and previous 35mm experiences lead her to believe that she will have one heck of a job compensating for the large differences in skin colors.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Tell her to shoot RAW.
She might want to use +1 compensation.
She should expose for the dress. The camera's meter will want to make the dress gray.
If she has photoshop, she will be able to compensate with fill or shadow and highlight. Dodging and burning in post processing will be helpful.

If you meter for the dress, you will under expose by quite a bit, in my experience.

Yes, meter for the dress but add at least +1, even +2 compensation. That should be easy to test before the wedding.

If the exposure is correct, using natural light, there is no need to compensate. You run into trouble when you meter of very dark objects or very light ones. In the first, you will overexpose, in the second, underexpose.

You need to find something in every shot that is as close to mid grey in reflection as possible. Not always easy.

Fot the flash I would add +1/3 FEC. You could go to +2/3....

Of course, shoot RAW.

It's not easy.... trial and error is the best teacher.... unfortunately it does not sound like there will not be enough ime to "fool around" with the flash before the wedding. Using a flash is not something for the uninitiated, also.

An incident meter will work wonders.
I didn't mean to have the camera meter for the dress.

Shooting manual and metering off your own hand and ignoring what the on camera light meter says when it's actually pointed at your subject usually gets you very close to proper exposure.

good advice from griptape. You might want to experiment first to figure out if you need to compensate a little when using that method.
Still warm here griptape. Is it cool up there yet?

Hey poloman, it's actually gorgeous here. We're around 68-74, and have been for about a week. A good bit of rain with it, but you couldn't ask for nicer weather overall. My windows are open for the fresh air, and it's just awesome.

But back to the OP, metering off your hand when using flash is definitely something that takes practice, as your flash is a whole different beast when used manually. If there's any way to practice in similar lighting conditions ahead of time, it would do a world of good. I guess I'm basically saying don't expose for black OR white, expose for the middle, and both will be close. And if you shoot raw, just post process for the bride, because we all know no one cares about the groom.

Beautiful here too.
If the bride is happy, the world is a happy place.

Amazing how everyone assumes the wedding dress will be white.

And wouldn't it make life easy if it wasn't ?

So is the groom black and the bride white? One thing you can do... along with all the suggestions here, is get your flash off camera and place the groom/dark skin person closer to the flash than the white dress/light skin person. It will help a little.

poloman wrote in post #6497590
She should expose for the dress.

bohdank wrote in post #6497791
meter for the dress but add at least +1, even +2 compensation.

I'd hope you both mean the same?

IMO "Expose for" the dress, means metering a part of the dress (assuming it's white) that should be bright white (just retaining detail), and set your exposure so that your (spot) meter indicates about +2. (I'd call that "meter the dress, and set +2 exposure compensation")

All the other tones should fall into place, assuming the contrast of the lighting is okay...

Titus213 wrote in post #6500938
Amazing how everyone assumes the wedding dress will be white.

You are easily amazed!

For starters - if you shoot with a custom white balance you will start in a much better place (gray card or expodisc or what ever) THen follow the advice above

AndreaBFS wrote in post #6501328
You are easily amazed!

Yeah, probably so. It keeps my life interesting though.