skin tones when shooting under direct sunlight...

[jks_photo]

hi,


anybody have good tips on how to shoot good pictures of people in direct sunlight. by good i mean i will get acceptable skin tones... I know ND filters are a good tool for this but what if you don't have ND filters how do you do it?


I'm asking because I had to take pictures of kids doing some field demos at school [i.e. dancing and stuff in a large open area] I got good colors on their colorful clothes but am disappointed at their skin tones.


will post some pics...


thanks


james

[JustinThyme]

ND filters really are not a good choice for this. They are most suited to add additional stops to allow for longer exposures in bright suns for an effect like flowing water and by definition wont change the color of anything hence "Neutral".


If you post up some pics showing your problem shots along with camera and lens combo used and exif data and setting used for the exposure Im sure I can help you out. I shoot A LOT of outdoor sports and this is one of the first things one has to master. You shouldnt need any additional tools, just the right body/lens combo and corrrect setttings and correct white balance. It also helps if your monitor is calibrated with a hardware calibration device like a Colormunki or Spyder Pro on the lower end. It is common to go in circels trying to get photos to look right when what ou are seeing on the monitor is not true rendition of colors in the first place. Most monitors default profiles add saturation and contrast to be more appealing to the eye, well that doesnt help when trying to fix a photo that may not be incorrect in the first place, simpy how it is displayed is incorrect. Then to add to the nightmare what you just saw on the monitor after spending too much time in post process isnt what comes out of the printer. This is why I advocate the colormunki, Use it to profile your printer and monitor and what you see on the monitor is what gets spit out of the printer.





Here is a nice blasting mid day sun photo for you with several well defined colors including skin tones.

[Richard Lane]

<span style="font-size: 11.6667px;"]anybody have good tips on how to shoot good pictures of people in direct sunlight. by good i mean i will get acceptable skin tones...

If by direct sunlight, you are referring to overhead bluish Sunlight in the afternoon, then you could adjust your White Balance to the Daylight setting and this should warm up the skin tones a bit. The cloudy setting will warm up the skin tones a little bit more (more red).


The Auto WB uses reflected light which can fool the Auto WB setting, as opposed to direct light on your subject, so sometimes you have to tell the camera what the correct WB should be. The more expensive Bodies generally have better Auto WB, but they can be fooled too, especially with green grass, blue water, sand or snow.


The other thing you could do is shoot in RAW and then adjust the WB in post.


A more advanced technique is to use a Custom WB with an Expodisc for direct light at the lens position, or a Gray card at the reflective subject position. The idea here is that the gray card is a standard 18% gray and it wont fool the camera into what it thinks it sees via non-standarized reflected light.


Nice Shot Justin, and welcome to the forums, I have already enjoyed your informative posts and input here!





Rich