Why did the bride come out so dark?

Question

White Wedding dress and the groom was also in white. (Black couple) Advanced D70 with wireless flash. Dress perfect in pictures but aces all black. Used Meter but printer "printed too dark". Camera (During picture taking) had to be set to plus 1.3 more exposer. (Pictures look nice but detail lost in dress but now can see the faces). Printer had to be reset. Pictures look nice "But" why can't the so called advanced Nikon 70 do a better job like Nikon claims? I had to meter all day long in manual exposure. Drove me nuts. I don't have this problem with white skin.

Answer 1

Shooting in manual isn't all that bad...

I'm guessing this was a relatively new experience for you.  Keep practicing and learn your cameras metering system.  Also, take it off matrix metering and use spot metering.  This way you are metering off only a small portion of image.  For darker skinned people, I meter off their skin and depending on how dark they are, drop the EV somewhere around -1.  You could also meter off the dress and add EV so that it is around +1 or so, like you did.

Most all cameras are set to meter the light reflectance off an 18% gray card.  So when you spot meter black, it will tend to overexpose it and when you spot meter white, it will tend to underexpose it. It does this because while it is seeing black or white, it thinks it is seeing gray. That's why you need to be familiar with your camera's metering system.  Learn to correct in the situations it is going to overexpose or underexpose in.

Answer 2

Did you meter spot, average/centerweightet or matrix. This can be a tough combination for any camera. I would have metered for the skin tones knowing some of the dress would be blown out or used a program that can do pseudo HDR from a single shot  

Answer 3

It's due to the high degree of contrast. Wedding dresses are usually very white. In order to avoid overexposing the dress the camera needs to allow less light in. The downside is that allowing less light in darkens everything else. In the case of someone with dark skin this could make them completely dark.

Answer 4

obviously because the lighting was inadequate, the exposure, iso, aperture, speed and other settings were not right.

its never the cameras fault. the camera is just a tool. the camera only does what the photographer tells it to do. The D70 is a decent camera and unless its broken its not the cameras fault.

The most important part of any camera is the photographer.

Answer 5

Doesn't sound like a surprise to me. Black skin and white clothes..... total opposites that the camera is supposed to cope with.

My Canon 40D has something called "highlight tone priority" which expands the dynamic range a bit, but it would have still been a very challenging situation for any camera.

At least it sounds like you did overcome the problems, even though it wasn't easy.