Outdoor Wedding Question

[ChowChi-Ching]

I have a wedding set up for August, it is an outdoor wedding. I have a Nikon D70s but what I am worried about is blowing out the dress. What is the best way to keep the pictures looking good but not lose the detail in the dress??

[jorgemonkey]

I have a wedding set up for August, it is an outdoor wedding. I have a Nikon D70s but what I am worried about is blowing out the dress. What is the best way to keep the pictures looking good but not lose the detail in the dress??

Hope it gets cloudy

[jorgemonkey]

I'm actually working on the images from my last wedding I shot on a partly cloudy day. My "style" and how I worked around it was I had the sun behind the bride, and used my flash for fill. It did a pretty good job and keeping the highlights in the dress, and getting some cool shots.

[Canuck935]

If you don't have cloud cover find somewhere with open shade. If you must shoot in direct light get a good meter reading and take it from there. A little blowout on the dress is OK but be careful not to wash it out completely.

Also like jorgemonkey said fill flash is your friend.

[photophorous]

I know you said you were shooting with a D70s, but if the lighting is too bad and there's no shade that can be used, you might want to consider shooting some low contrast negative film, like Portra NC, Fuji 160S or Fuji 400H.

Paul

[Alison]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t69k-fclFpA
This guy says meter on the dress.

[mn shutterbug]

Are you sure it's going to be a white dress?

[ChowChi-Ching]

Thanks for all the help.....actually I do not have all the details of the wedding as of yet - Don't know what time of day, what color of dress, none of that.... I basically just know the place and date right now, as the couple get it figured out, they let me know. They just figured out that the colors are going to be Black and Pink.... but no mention of wedding dress yet. I am just trying to be overly prepared.

[mikeh]

i use the d70 my settings are
spot metering
wb daylight
m mode
for a white dress spot meter the dress
spot meter for black
take both settings divide by two
eg white f16
black f8
use f 11 or 14
shutter speed the same
or undercomp. by half
easy to fix dark colour than light
AND SHOOT ONLY RAW easy to fix with nikon software
hope this helps

[Sebastian]

Spot meter off the brightest part of the dress, go 1-1.5 stops over that reading. If you just meter off the dress the shot will be underexposed.

[Alison]

Spot metyer off the brightest part of the dress, go 1-1.5 stops over that reading. If you just meter off the dress the shot will be underexposed.

Yep but they say its better to be under than to be over.
I have metered off grey concrete before.

[Sebastian]

Yep but they say its better to be under than to be over.
I have metered off grey concrete before.

"They're" basically wrong. I recommend Googling "shooting to the right."

Being a stop to 1.5 stops under means obliterating a lot of detail in the shadows at worst, and having really noisy shadows at best. Being that white and black are pretty much the limits of what cameras can record, this has to be nailed. 1.5 stops off in a contrasty scene means the frame is pretty much lost. I'm pretty sure this is mostly due to the fact that the gamma curve tries to favor the highlights instead of shadows, and the dynamic range is much less allocated to the darker areas. I will double-check this when I get home.

I've found that minor overexposure can easily be brought back in whatever RAW software I use, although I usually blow some of the specular highlights just to have spots of really bright white. Personally, I feel that a few totally blown spots (very small ones) really help the image rather than hinder it when dealing with shiny bright materials like wedding gowns or metals.

[another view]

Personally, I feel that a few totally blown spots (very small ones) really help the image rather than hinder it when dealing with shiny bright materials like wedding gowns or metals.

I agree with this. I know we're all trained to think that any amount of blown highlights somehow equals failure, but there's a limit to how much contrast a sensor can record. I haven't commented until now because I haven't done this digitally - I shot weddings on film, which has a lot more exposure latitude in a case like this (still, proper exposure and a great lab are important). But from other work, I think that having a little bit that is blown out might keep the image from looking dull, flat and lifeless. I'm not saying that blown out is good; just saying that it isn't always the end of the world.

[Sebastian]

I just double-checked and I'm happy to report I was correct. Most of the linear data on a sensor is used by the mids and highlights, the shadows getting essentially screwed. So, with digital, shooting as close to blowing the highlights as possible without actually doing so preserves the highest amount of shadow detail.

If anyone reading this has the HDRI Handbook, the information I referenced starts on page 30.

[Frog]

Does the D70 have an auto braketing setting ?

[freygr]

Does the D70 have an auto braketing setting ?

YES, but it's not as fast as the newer bodies.

[Medley]

Sebastian is entirely correct. In an unprocessed image, 50% of the image detail is in the brightest range. There's 25% in the next brightest, 12.5% in the third, etc.....

The D70s may or may not have a live histogram view, but I'd be very surprised if you can't review an image and call up a histogram in the info menu. That should tell you wether or not you have significant overexposure- in time to get a second shot, if necessary.

- Joe U.

[fx101]

Your best bet is going to be metering the dress (like others suggested) but maybe adding +.5 exposure comp, or just enough that the background will be slightly underexposed and the dress will be slightly overexposed but not blown out. You will then be able to use the curves+levels tools or shadow/highlight tools in photoshop to easily lighten up the background and darken the dress with minimal discernable loss in detail. I have a friend who shoots a 1DS for weddings and he just rapid fires bracketed shots and merges the exposures in photomatix. In your case just meter the dress and add a little exposure comp.