White Shirts

[kmccarty]

Hello to All with the Same Passions I have with Photography
I need some help when I photograph a group or family in all white t-shirts.
In most cases, it is an outdoor scenerio.
The portraits always turn out to dark for the majority of the picture and the shirts are too bright. When I try to lighten them they really look lously.
There has to be something I can do to master this scenerio, I want to tell all my clients not to wear all white but I dont dare, then I have allowed myself to be defeated by a look that alot of clients seem to want. White shirts and blue jeans....
Here is an example of what I mean....


Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I always struggle with this scenrio.
The white shirts seem to always pick up blue and greens too no matter what time of day.

Thanks,

Kimberly

[WesternGuy]

Kimberly, for some reason the picture did not post. Alll I get is a red X inside a couple of squares. ????

WesternGuy

[Skyman]

At least you can see the red X I get nothing...
Still I can hazard a guess as to what might be happening:
Firstly you are possibly setting your exposure incorrectly. With a large area of white in the shot it is most likely that your cameras lightmeter is being confused into thinking the scene is brighter than it actually is. This happens as the light meter in the camera can't differentiate between something that will appear lighter than normal (a white shirt) and something that has its default reflectance - often called 18%grey. There are a number of ways around this. You could set the exposure to slightly over expose the shot, You could zoom in on your subjects face and take your light meter reading then recompose the shot, you could get a grey card and ask your subject to hold it and take a reading off that or you could buy a handheld light meter and take a reading that way. All of these techniques are not fool proof so you will need to learn which solutions work for you, when and why.

Secondly, the whites picking up a colour could be either an incorrect white balance setting in the camera, a flash or other light source that is different from the main source, the whites themselves showing up reflected colour from objects around them, or a combination of all of the above. The solutions are to check the white balance settings in the camera (in an ideal world you can use some sort of calibration chart for a test shot and apply the corrections from it to all your shots so long as the lighting doesn't change) make sure your lighting is all the same colour temperature, daylight, flash, tungsten and flourescent lighting all have different colour casts. this is not normally an issue if only one type of lighting is used but can be a major headache when you mix daylight and tungsten or tungsten and flourescent for example. Finally move your subjects away from anything that might reflect its own colour onto their white shirts, such as greenery with reflective leaves etc. hopefully some of these tips might help you but it really would help to see a shot that shows your mistakes as that is the only way to identify what is actually happening.

[OldClicker]

I was able to see her shots by cutting and pasting the address from thew properties.

http://essenceinaflash.zenfolio.com/p5324164

I can't really be of much help but hopefully others will chime in.

TF

[Skyman]

whoa what flash are you using? if you can manually set the flash power, meter for the background then set the flash to your aperture or even slightly below this. Your flash is blowing out your highlights. Also shoot Raw and adjust curves accordingly to bring back the detail in your highlights. It looks like the detail should be there if you shoot raw as your exposure isn't very far out, just that the white shirts are more reflective than the rest of the photo. I also like to use a big softbox on my flash as this helps to keep it looking natural and minimizes the effect of the blown out highlights. my softbox drops about 2 stops off the flash output so I just set it to whatever my lens is set at and forget about it!.

[tayl0124]

whoa what flash are you using? if you can manually set the flash power, meter for the background then set the flash to your aperture or even slightly below this. Your flash is blowing out your highlights. Also shoot Raw and adjust curves accordingly to bring back the detail in your highlights. It looks like the detail should be there if you shoot raw as your exposure isn't very far out, just that the white shirts are more reflective than the rest of the photo. I also like to use a big softbox on my flash as this helps to keep it looking natural and minimizes the effect of the blown out highlights. my softbox drops about 2 stops off the flash output so I just set it to whatever my lens is set at and forget about it!.

Looking at the pictures, wouldn't this actually make the shirts more blown out???

[Skyman]

with flash, since it happens at the speed of light (unless your flashes are pulsing) the exposure is set via the aperture, so for a flash that lets you, you can set it to your iso and aperture and it will fire pretty close to correct exposure (dependant on your subjects distance to the camera) what seems to be happening in these shots is that the flash is on auto and can't light the whole scene. with my method the shutterspeed is set for ambient light so the background is also correctly exposed. also you want the white shirst to be white not muddy so you still need a good amount of light on them. I am not suggesting that this is the best / only way to do this, but I have produced consitent results with this technique.

[drg]

Kimberly,

Welcome to Photography Review!

Skyman has started you off on one possible path to making this kind of image work.

The primary problems include that the photo is effectively overexposed, even though it appears some detail can be recovered from the images you posted. Doing too much in post processing, even working from RAW files can quickly lead to an unnatural image.

Are you shooting with your camera flash or with the strobe mounted in the hotshoe? Moving the light off camera and diffusing it slightly (ala MiniSoftbox) will make this work a lot better. In the photo with the family under the tree, (golf course?) the edge of the light/flash effect is visible in places. Control the light and the shadows if you can't use enough light to 'fill' the whole scene.

Natural backdrops always will present added color issues from trees and other flora, even with custom White Balance. And those white shirts are just reflectors shooting the light right back into your camera. Many photographers shoots this kind of scene in front of a backdrop as opposed to a 'location'. No overhead issues that way from natures filters.

If you must shoot outside, use a longer focal length to 'compress' the perspective and move the subject forward to get them out from under the trees. Try a overhead white translucent tarp/diffuser that is out of the picture but softens the natural light. You can even then bounce your flash/strobes off it to get 'natural' overhead lighting!

The Studio & Lighting might provide you with even more feedback and 'hints'.

Best wishes and again Welcome to PR!

[freygr]

The white shirts have caused the camera to under expose the faces. To fix it you have to use cures or gamma adjustments in your editing program.

To correct it before the photo is taken, you have to use adjustments on the camera (back light or fill flash) or use a spot meter and manually set the exposure.