Portrait help

[Yarrow]

I dont know to much about lighting for portraits. Im just practicing. I keep running into this problem with my oldest child. She is much darker them my youngest and I can never get lighting correct on her. I've tried what I know and thats not to much lol...I sometime ends up washing out the little one with to much light.
Any suggestions? No worries about being harsh I know this pic is not very good.

[Jaedon]

Light your oldest seperately with a spot light of some sort and then expose for the youger child. When the flash goes off the extra light on the older child should balance them out.... I am just guessing of course as I have never shot in a studio... but it was the first thought that came into my head.

[Copy_Kot]

This is only a guess... it seems to me that a few strategically place reflectors should take care of the problem you are having. I would try Jaedons idea too

[Greg McCary]

What I see looks fine without buying a small lighting kit, maybe a little dark. But it seems out of focus. What was your camera settings? Do you remember? Your camera might have metered for the brighter background as well. Maybe you could set your camera to spot meter on the oldest girl? Or meter them both and set the camera for somewhere in the middle.

[MJS]

You've already mentiioned that your eldest is darker than her sister. Can you spot meter with your camera? Get a gray card from your local photo store, spot meter the card in the set up while in manual and use that exposure, you should be able to accurately show their differences in skin tone in the lighting that you have available, be it natural, flash etc.

[Yarrow]

Nope I dont remember the settings. I did this about 2wks ago.

I didnt think to try to spot meter. Sometimes doing indoor pics of her she looks the same way but outdoors she looks great.
When I do a spot light..am I to aim at her face or just all of her?

[cyberlord]

Aim at her skin for spot metering. But it won't work well if you are also using the flash. The flash is most likely in PTTL mode and metering off the whole scene which includes the bright background.

Is your flash built in or a hotshoe type? If it is a hotshoe can you make any adjustments to it? If it's not adjustable can it be fired manually at least at full power? You can then adjust your aperture to the correct exposure.

The following applies to manual flash/camera only. If you can't adjust your shutter/aperture independently or can't fire the flash manunally it will not work. The flash does not have to be adjustable, but if it is it greatly simplifies the process and you can adjust the flash output instead of the aperture to affect exposure.

2 rules that will help any flash photography. Aperture (and flash subject distance) controls the flash lighting and shutter speed (remembering aperture affects it too) controls the ambient lighting. So turn you camera and flash in manual mode, set the aperture to f8 to start (it can be any number really depending on how blurry you want the background or how tight a focus you want on the subject, but you will have to adjust flash power manually or by distance for exposure) then meter the skin tones for shutter speed. Your camera should indicate 0.0 for exposure when you have the shutter matching the aperture. Write these numbers down. Now take a test shot. If the picture is too dark then open the aperture to 5.6. If its too light stop it down to f11. Look at the histogram. If it indicates it's too bright (graph has data against the extreme right) or to dark (all the graph data is bunched up to the extreme left and no data elsewhere) then make adjustments. When you get the flash light balanced now it's time to balance the ambient light. If the scene is as above where you are close to the background and front lit like that you will not see much difference when you change the shutter speed. However if you are a distance from your background or its not being lit by your flash at all (only ambient light) you will see the background change. It will darken with a faster shutter speed and lighten with a slower speed. This will not affect you flash lit subjects tho as flash is only controlled by aperture.

Most cameras have a limit on sync speed so in bright ambient light is might be hard to get a background that is darker than the subject.

To greatly improve the light quality it's best to get the flash off camera, a lot closer to the subject, and diffused into a large area. Most of the time builtin flash and hotshoe flash in auto mode (PTTL) will not get the scene quite right.

I hope this helps you or anyone reading improve your flash photography.

Tim

[Yarrow]

Thank You cyberlord..That is some great info,