Bobnewnan

I was asked to do some group pictures of my friends, in their home, over the holidays. I had a big problem with exposure, their darker skin absorbs light such that even with flood lights my ISO ranged up to 12,000. The group was large enough that I couldn't open the aperture and keep everybody in focus and the speed was down to 1/80. Other than more artificial lights, does anybody have any suggestions when taking photos of dark skin people. I don't have a release, so no examples of the results. One more thing, has anybody ever done noise reduction twice on the same photo? I use "Neat" and I had to do it twice to get a good shot. Any suggestions?

PixelStan77 Loc: Vermont/Chicago

Bob, What was the camera used? I would use two flashes. My sense in Lightroom or photoshop th images can be corrected. What will be the final product print size? If you live in the Chicago area, we can do a test image.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

If you're using auto-exposure and the people are wearing lighter toned clothing, the camera may try to underexpose.
I notice in previous posts you have a Nikon D500 (lucky guy!)
Floodlights?
Get a real speedlight or two, like any of the bigger Nikon SB's (even used) or if you're on a budget, a Godox (Flashpoint at Adorama) unit.
The Godox have a built in radio receiver that work great with their new Pro transmitter.
You'd be amazed at how much you can do with speedlights.

Edit: Bob, on a previous post looks like you may have an SB 5000, in my opinion, the best Nikon speedlight made.
Why didn't you use it?

delottphoto

Dodge and burn baby.

Actually at time of capture, try to add more light where needed.

jameyward Loc: North Carolina

I find moving the “Shadow” slider (in Lightroom) to the right is very helpful to lighten dark skin. 😀

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Hot lights (or even LED) don't give nearly the output of a monolight or higher end speedlights. Using a speed in a bounce, softbox or umbrella will do a few things - more light, faster "effective" exposure times (the duration of a "pop" can be 1/700 and shorter with lower power), and nice wide open pupils.

The first three were shot with a 60" umbrella and off camera speedlight (two lights in a bracket), and the last was a shoe mounted speedlight bounced off a high ceiling and adjacent wall, with the flash pointed over my right shoulder.

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jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

This topic has come up before.

https://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-photograph-mixed-skin-tones/
https://www.nyip.edu/photo-articles/fun-stuff-for-photographers/photographing-people-of-color
https://jezebel.com/the-truth-about-photography-and-brown-skin-1557656792
https://www.buzzfeed.com/syreetamcfadden/teaching-the-camera-to-see-my-skin?utm_term=.buk2aWWv2#.iyQ4z22n4

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

When I shoot group photos, particularly with a flash, I shoot bursts of 3 or 4 with the camera set to the fastest frame rate it will manage. To get the flash to fire several times quickly you have to have the ISO set fairly high so the flash doesn't dump much of its charge for each shot.

Shooting bursts like that avoids the problem of blinking in response to the preflash. If someone blinks, they have usually recovered by one of the later shots. If there's a late blinker and an early blinker you can swap heads in Photoshop since the background won't change much at a high frame rate.

Similarly, if you have a mixture of light and dark skinned people in a group you might consider taking several bracketed exposures for each shot. You can choose the right exposure for the background and paste heads into the photo from one of the other bracketed shots. My Nikons, when set to bracketing and high frame rate will just take one bracket quickly and stop, so again the background doesn't change much during the burst.

Digital photos are free, so the only cost of taking multiple shots is the time needed to sort them after the fact.

markie1425 Loc: Bryn Mawr, PA

I do volunteer reunion photography for many of my former high school's classes. Last year, I did the Class of '77 which was the youngest class to date--and also a class with many more people of color than I had previously met.

Didn't know whether I'd have a problem, but after a few test shots--bouncing the flash, pointing it straight on, mounting it on a bracket or directly on the hot shoe--I found that I had no problem. All my images came out well.

Images taken with Canon EOS Rebel T2i w/Canon EF-S 18-135mm and a Canon Speedlite 430ESX II.

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Low Budget Dave

As long as you have time to do some post-processing, and as long as you have a clean image to start with, lightening the shadows will work pretty well.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Use LARGE white satin umbrellas (60”) on two powerful strobes. Place them directly above the camera.

If photographing African Americans with very dark skin, the key is to wrap LOTS of highly diffused light around them. You can’t do that unless you bounce light off a dull white surface. You may also add highly specular “kicker” lights for accents, but for detail in facial features, you need highly diffused fill.

Use a flash meter (or chimp) and use only manual exposure.

This sort of work is a perennial challenge for many professionals. Most of its success is found in planning and setup...

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Set your camera in Manual mode and your shutter at 1/200 sec. The high shutter speed will reduce the effect of ambient light. I don’t use floods so I don’t know what you need for F stop and light locations but an ISO of 400 would seem to work OK. An incident meter or camera metering off of a grey card would be helpful. Remember that with flash you’re working with two sources of light, the ambient and the flash. Exposure on the subject is controlled by the flash. The amount of the effect from ambient light is controlled by the shutter speed. These are my thoughts.

bpulv Loc: Buena Park, CA

First of all, I would use electronic flash or studio hot lights. I am guessing that when you said you used "flood lights" you meant reflector flood light bulbs and not photographic hotlights. Low wattage reflector flood lights do not provide a lot of illumination and their color temperature is often questionable. I would suggest you use electronic flash instead. The electronic flash will provide enough light and is of the correct color temperature (around 5600K) to provide proper rendering of darker skin tones. You may also need to selectively lighten some of the people in Photoshop if their skin tones are much darker that the average skin tone of others in the group.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

The worst situation I found myself in was shooting a friend's daughter's wedding. I had not met the happy couple prior to showing up for the wedding. She was a very fair skinned, blond, wearing a very light cream colored wedding gown. The groom's folks were wearing very light colored suits. He was a very dark black man. To make matters worse, the wedding was outdoors at night. That was a lesson in itself. Always meet the folks to be photographed prior to having to photograph them. I simply exposed for her gown and pushed the exposure two stops. Processing was a bit more than usual for that kind of event, but it worked well. Everyone was happy with the results.
--Bob

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

Sounds lie a worst case scenario!