Wedding Dress Detail

[GP's Photograph]

I have been test shooting my S2 with my weddings I have shot in the past couple of weeks and I noticed the detail in the bride's wedding dress does not show up like my 35mm film. I noticed a local very well known photographer in Wichita, KS shoots strictly digital, but uses a miniture soft box on her flash to shoot most shots.

I usually shoot wedding portraits with studio lights, but are these too hot (bright) for digital? The other local photographer does not use studio lights and only a flash hooked up to a flip bracket with the soft box.

Here is a sample of a bride who were a mostly all white dress with little detail. However, she did have two streams of ribbon coming off of her bouquie and they do not seem to appear on the portrait. How can I fix this? Do I have to purchase soft boxes for my lights or should I forget the lights altogether and purchase an external flash?

[Seachicken]

Hi!

Your bride has the same problem as the bird on this thread (http://s2pro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=345) . So I think you could fix this by exposing for the highlights and shooting in RAW.

This may not suit you as RAW is more time consuming than getting it right in the camera.. but on the other hand it may also save you skin once in a while too.

I agree with you too that softer light is another good (probably better) way around this problem, but I'll leave that for someone more qualified to comment.

Andy.

[memobug]

What kind of light was this?

The gown is overexposed - color neg film will handle overexposure much better. The light is too strong on the dress, but making it less directional may help, if you do have a diffuser available, give that a try, too.


Regards,

Matt

[PauHana]

You also might want to try changing the lighting a bit - from the shadows in the shot it appears you have 2 lights coming in from 45 degrees. A bit of side light throws some shadows in the folds of the dress and usually looks a bit better than flat lighting. I would put the main light on the what ever side the groom is on (helping the darker tux as well) with a soft fill coming from camera. My humble two cents.

[jbfocus]

I used to get some photos like that but I made one change and the over blown dress is a thing of the past. I assume you are using a TTL Nikon flash? I hope so set you ISO to 200 this appears to be the optimum setting at least from my tests. I have shot the last 9 weddings at 200 and have had no more blown highlights.
Give it a try

[memobug]

Hey Jimmy,

If 200 is working okay, were you blowing out at 400? I found good results at 100 on my Metz 45, but that seems to be because the flash compensation doesn't work as well at higher ISO.

Regards,

Matt

[jbfocus]

Yes, 400 was causing blown highlights. I also spoke with a Fuji tech and he said 200 is the recommended ISO setting. I have seen a 100% difference since setting the ISO at 200 for almost all situations. I was very unhappy with the camera untill I changed to 200.

[memobug]

Thanks for sharing what you learned.

I don't know what the possible explanation for it would be other than that the TTL doesn't work entirely well when low intensity is called for. We know it doesn't work at 800 according to the specs, but if you are far enough away from the subject it seems to do okay for large groups. At 400 if you can't get too close, it isn't doing its job. By 200, it may be working just because the flash isn't strong enough to blow anything out too badly.

Regards,

Matt

[GP's Photograph]

The image did not appear overexposed when I shot the couple. Actually, I had to lighten the image a little bit to get a good image for the couples' faces. Would it be best to underexpose digital images rather than overexposing them?
My camera was set at ISO 200 not 400 so that is out of the question.
As for the RAW setting. I haven't played around with the RAW setting that much because there is really no need for it. The RAW files are much too large to mess with when shooting a couple hundred pictures per wedding.
How do other wedding photographers get the best results??

[Seachicken]

Just looked at the histogram for the image you posted. There are peaks at both edges of the histogram. This indicates that your exposure was Ok, but that the dynamic range was too great to fit in the bounds of the histogram. You could have underexposed a little to get back the dress's detail, but all detail in the tux would have been lost (it almost is anyway).

Using RAW mode would help you out here bigtime... maybe you could look into it for selected shots, or if you really need to shoot only jpg, you might try using the ORG setting for tone... but then other images will look flat unless post processed.

I'm sure all the lighting techniques suggested on this thread will be more effective though.

[Joe Peoples]

<<The image did not appear overexposed when I shot the couple. Actually, I had to lighten the image a little bit to get a good image for the couples' faces. Would it be best to underexpose digital images rather than overexposing them?>>

Was there some detail (tone) in the original file, before you lightened it? If so, you can use a little PS magic and fix the problem. How about posting the original image so we can see what's doing.

[Tom V]

GP, et al,

It is very easy to throw out the wrong pixels when you adjust an image. One very easy way is to lighten a picture with the [talking Photoshop here] Brightness/Contrast dialog box. Usually this control will ruin a picture more than help.

A much easier way to lighten the look of a picture [for example, lighten a face - without ruining the hightlights or shadows] is to adjust with the Curves dialog box. This control box allows you to adjust midtones (or hightlights and shadows) with minimal effect on the extremes of the image.

Attached is a little demonstration showing the resulting Histograms from adjusting an image using the Brightness/Contrast slider and adjusting the midtones with the Curves controls.

Perhaps when GP adjusted the lightness to brighten the faces, the highlight blew out.

[Wichita Wayne]

The current trouble with digital seems to be latitude, so we will continue to use negative film for better latitude. For weddings we still use Hasselblads, not only for the latitude but also for the big negatives that can be retouched and manipulated in the printing process. Next year we may try to convert some of the wedding photojournalism (reception shots) shots to digital but for the big important setup shots we will stick to the Hasselblads. As we gain more experience with the digital cameras we will use them more and more but that will take time. We also usually double shoot our weddings with two cameras, and in the near future we may try shooting the first shot with a Hasselblad and the second shot with an S2 Pro. If Wichita, KS customers like that method then they will get the best of both worlds.

It has been years since I shot a wedding in 35mm but a few months ago we shot a wedding in Sligo, Ireland with mostly 35mm using a 28 to 200 zoom lens. We had two Metz flashes on our Hasselblads fail, and I mean really fail. One we have repaired and the other we had to trash. I had my personal Nikon F100 with me (for tourist pictures) so I decided to use it rather than fight with the flashes. Luckily the big setup shots in the cathedrial were fininshed when the last Metz died.

Wayne

[Marvo]

Rantings "From Marvo's soap box...."
Shoot exposing for highlight detail (not so easy to read on the S2 histogram display) and listen to uncle Tom V.

To achieve a perfect print, EVERY frame you shoot - no matter how laborious or inconvienient the task, is likely to require some post production adjustment! Every shot you used to take on negative film needed the keen eye of the trained printer to adjust the print settings after first printing a test strip in order to end up with a "good" print that you will be happy with. Shooting a digital file doesn't let us photographers off the hook. Someone still has to give each mechanically calculated exposure the human touch. Also, how many of us can shoot a roll of 12 (or 36) transparencies and get the exposure of EVERY frame bang-on?

If you are in a situation where exposure to capture highlight detail is paramount (as with a bride's precious wedding dress) then RAW is the best option BUT over exposed blown-out highlights cannot be retrived very succesfully from a RAW file in my experience , but lost shadow detail can. So when shooting RAW it can pay to underexpose by half or one stop and pull it back when processing to TIF files. That way the highlight detail will always be there to be had.

Anyone else got any comments on these theories?

Marvo.

[GP's Photograph]

I have used PS for the past 2 years but I have not used all the options it has to offer very diversly. When I have tried to compensate for the subjects I have usually used levels instead of curves.
Is this my downfall? Should I start playing with the curves instead of levels?
Thank you Tom for your insight!

[Wichita Wayne]

What a nice lesson. Thanks again.

[Joe Peoples]

Copied from my reply to another thread:

One thing I've found is that there are several ways to skin the digital cat in Photoshop, so what I'm suggesting is one of perhaps several ways to go about addressing some of the concerns mentioned:

As far as the blown out highlights (wedding gowns) with direct flash: check your histogram and watch for good tonality from end to end, making sure you aren't too heavy on the right side, where the highlights are. When you open the file, it will be somewhat underexposed overall, with tonality in the gown. Duplicate the layer, using screen mode. Select the gown, then erase the top layer to taste.

[Seachicken]

Before the odd thought, I'd like to say that I think you could use levels to get something similar to Tom's curves adjustment. Just move the grey triangular arrow (directly under the historgram) to the left.

Now for the odd thought...
Why not use the camera as a flash meter?
Move to the subject and take a photo of only the dress. Hopefully, you'll get a narrow spike somewhere in the histogram. Keep adjusting the aperture and re-snapping until the spike is as far as you can get it over to the right hand side of the histogram without it being clipped. Then use this as the aperture for the shot.

Perhaps this is too much trouble to go to during a wedding. But perhaps it's a sneaky way to get a tricky subject's exposure dead on with flash.

Or... it's nonsense.. comments?

[Tom V]

Using the levels is a viable method of adjusting the tones of a shot. The end sliders are like the ends of the curves in the Curves Control Panel, and the middle grey level slider is like moving the center of the curve up and down.

I use both.

The levels tells you the distribution of tones, and the curves gives the best way to move (adjust) particular tones. For example, you can lighten a 25% tone and NOT lighten a 50% tone. You can also lighten deep shadows with detail, and not effect midtones or highlights with the Curves.

However, you can't tell if you have clipped tones (blown-out highlights, or solid shadows) with the Curves as you can with Levels.

A new demo will be posted in a few days that will hopefully show the difference(s).

On the suggestion of isolating the wedding dress to "flash meter" it, in order to manually determine the exposure settings. Be careful that you don't change your distance in order to do it. Moving back to include more subject will effectively diminish your light, which will require changing your exposure settings.

I have not used my flash meter nearly as much since getting the S2. I use the camera's histogram to check my highlights all the time. I keep the highlights away from the right side to insure that they don't blow out. If I can't keep them in line, I adjust the light(s), and/or shoot in RAW mode. A RAW mode file processed with EX in 16-bit mode has a wider latitude of exposure.

[Seachicken]

On the suggestion of isolating the wedding dress to "flash meter" it, in order to manually determine the exposure settings. Be careful that you don't change your distance in order to do it. Moving back to include more subject will effectively diminish your light, which will require changing your exposure settings.

Been thinking about this... I see the reasoning, but it doesn't match with my experience.

I guess the reasoning is this (apologies for putting words on your mouth and probably misunderstanding you)... as you move away from something, light falls off with the inverse square law. So if you meter something and then move away to take the shot, your reading will be wrong.

I haven't tried this but I bet if I meter 1m from a grey wall in my room, then move back to 2m, the reading will be the same.

I've a feeling that the light is falling off, but the size of the object on the sensor is getting smaller at the same time, and the two exactly cancel out.

[Tom V]

If we are talking about an on-camera flash:

Auto flash and TTL flash metering will adjust to keep you exposure the same.
When you move away from the subject, the flash automatically increases the light (the flash duration time), and when you move closer, the flash decreases the light, all in order to use your chosen aperture.

If your light was not falling off, you would have an amazing on-camera flash. You would be able to illuminate a crowd of people, and those 2m away would be adequately illuminated, and those just 1m away would not be lit the same and not blown out, and therefore, those 30m away would be lit just as well. Why, you would never have to buy a powerful flash!

If you are talking about a stationary light (on a stand, the sun, room lights, etc.):

The illumination on a stationary subject would remain the same no matter where you stood.

[Seachicken]

Sorry, I did put all the wrong words in your mouth! I was assuming the flashes were on stands..

Now if you could just tell me where to get one of those fancy new flashes .. ;)

[Joe Peoples]

<<When I have tried to compensate for the subjects I have usually used levels instead of curves.
Is this my downfall? Should I start playing with the curves instead of levels?>>

Levels is a Curve with 3 points and is a powerful and effective tool. In "Curves 101" there's something called an "S" Curve which cannot be done in Levels. As a suggestion, I'd do more than play with Curves and purchase one of the Tutorial CDs available on the subject.

[deluco]

GP, in addition to over exposing, you are not lighting the dress properly. Digital's latitude (or lack of) and other digital factors require that you not only expose properly, but light across the dress to show the detail. Film or digital, you should be lighting across the dress.

I've attached an example of proper lighting. Shot thru a Wescott Halo off camera.

[deluco]

Here's another one. All white dress AND tux. ...

[Wichita Wayne]

We have always used this type of lighting when we shoot weddings. It works great with film as well as digital. We even take at least one and sometimes two monolights to weddings and use them for all the formal shots.

[GP's Photograph]

Wayne,
What do you mean shooting across the dress? Plus, how do you use the mono lights when shooting the formal pictures?
Thank you very much for your help!!

[GP's Photograph]

Thanks also to Deluco for the examples...Same questions to you also.?

[deluco]

Here's a diagram of the lighting. Lighting across the dress means that the main light is doing just that...coming from one side and cuting across the dress, as opposed to coming directly from the front (ie, the flash on the camera only). This provides shadow depth to the face and also the dress. The detail is in the shadows. Note that the shoulders and the nose are pointing in slightly different directions, but both are NOT pointed directly at the light so that the light comes across both the face and the dress at an angle.

[deluco]

Here's a photo of the Halo made by Wescott. Approx cost is $102. from B&H mail order. Wescott also makes a softbox called Apollo... both the Halo and Apollo are umbrella mounts, very quick to mount and no rings or mounting hardware required. Excellent for location work.

[deluco]

Here's the Apollo

[deluco]

An alternative to using one light is to use two ... one main and one fill. This allows you to totally light the subject with the lights and not use the ambient room light as fill. Using the ambient as fill adds a risk that the room lights are not color balanced and will give you a bit of a color shift. I have not had a problem with this (except occassionally in the church) so I just use one light for speed and convenience.

[Wichita Wayne]

We use a handle mount flash on a stroboframe on the camera (Metz 60 or Sunpak 522/544) and put a 1200 or 1500 watt monolight (Photogenic or White Lightning) with a 60 inch umbrella to the side of the. We usually shoot most of the formal shots with the monolight high and next to the camera, but for the bride we shoot some with the monolight next to the camera ans some with the light to the side. The side light really makes the texture of the dress show up with the shadowing that it casts.

Dang, now you guys have got me all excited about shooting my next wedding. This is a great vocation for a 52 year old grandfather. I get to take pictures of pretty girls on their best day. It doesn't get any better than that.

[deluco]

My next wedding isn't 'til April. Waitin for a snow storm right now...get to shoot ALOT of white:)

[deluco]

Here's the setup...
I use the setup below for portraits. An S1 or S2 on the Stroboframe, with a Nikon SB22s flash and a Pocket Wizard radio transmitter, all mounted on a tripod with a quick release mount. For portraits I turn off the bracket flash and use just the Wescott Halo, fired with the slave.

[deluco]

Here's the Halo on light stand with a Lumedyne portable flash...very portable and 200ws is the most you need.

I also use three other room lights in the reception hall, White Lighting 200ws units. I just wish those were 400 ws for larger halls...

[Stormfield]

If you don't have studio lighting available on location shoots, have you tried setting slow sync and then flash exposure compensation on the camera to -1.5 or so, or on the flash (such as an sb28) to -1.5 to -1.7 or more? This fill-setting usually eliminates white detail blowout. It works well with a slave, too. Remember, the max sync speed of the S2 is 1/125 for METERED flash (tho to 1/180 using the PC sync socket-but not practical for most on location shoots), and the minimum for metered flash is 1/60!

[Wichita Wayne]

For years I have used incident and spot meters to determine correct exposure. With the setup we use 1/60th of a second at f-8 or f-11 (depending on the film speed and the guide number of the on-camera flash) usually hits the nail on the head with our medium format cameras so why would it be different with the S2? Besides you can set things up and check your results instantly with the play mode the same way that we used polaroid in the past.

[RaduGrozescu]

First, get the contrast to LOW (ORG or whatever). I see it was set to normal. You can correct later in PS.

It is rather easy to increase the contrast to what you need using Levels or Curves - but is almost impossible to lower the contrast in such a picture. Usually the details are alreadygone in whites.

Second - get some white umbrellas over your flashes. You will see a great improvement in the skin tones too.

Forget the softboxes for fast location work - unless you have plenty of assistants with you.

Yours,

Radu Grozescu

Corporate & Editorial Photography
www.RaduGrozescu.com (http://www.RaduGrozescu.com)

Wedding and Portraits Photography
www.2001foto.ro (http://www.2001foto.ro)

[Wichita Wayne]

We double shot the wedding with medium format and digital. The dress highlites were not good on the digital. I shot the digital on manual set (f-11 at 1/60th of a sec) the same as the medium format cameras. Several frames were completely washed out (a real puzzle). The frames were of the license signing off to the side of the church. I think it had something to do with the monolight set off to the side and pointing in our direction when I took the shots and confusing the TTL. We have made this shot with the Hasselblads many times with no trouble, but they do not use TTL flash. This stuff is going to take some serious experimentation to get straight. So for now we are still going to use the Hasselblads for most of the pictures and slowly switch to digital. Meduium format is going to be hard to beat with the current digital equipment, and the Hasselblads are so reliable and easy to use.

[memobug]

Maybe your beef is with the TTL? Try not using it, and maybe deliberately underexpose the digital by 1/2 stop in high contrast scenes.

Regards,

Matt

[deluco]

It sounds like you were over exposed. Shooting digital is very much like shooting slides...except you have even LESS latitude (if you shoot jpg) than with slides. If you use mono's with digital, I recommend you diffuse them alot and use them as an accent and not as a main, because they are difficult to control.

I agree with Matt regarding the settings. When I use TTL direct (not bounced) I shoot at -2 or -3 stops exposure compensation. I don't know why but this body over exposes when using TTL flash. Otherwise I shoot the flash on Auto...one or more stops lower than the aperture. Generally the camera is set to f6.7 or f8 and the Auto is set to f4 or 5.6. It does take experimentation.

When using the mono's make up a matrix diagram with the f stop readings and distances at different settings (full-half-quarter power). This way you will know what you are getting when you place your mono light. Otherwise bounce it or back waaaay off and use it as an accent light and not a main.

[Mike Goebel]

Now that you know the whites are being blown away, the next wedding you shoot, underexpose 1 stop then 2 stops. Make a note of which pictures you MANUALLY underexposed 1 and 2 stops. You will then determine how to set your camera manually for white gowns.

[jbfocus]

The problem with most DIGITAL pictures is that they look digital which is caused by to much contrast. Set your ISO to 200 and org-org-hard. the org settings bring the contrast under control and the ISO setting of 200 helps to prevent the blown highlights the hard setting is a matter of taste but since I started using hard I never need to sharpen. All you have to do is set your S 2 up this way and shoot. try it and post back. Also make sure you are using a NIKON flash. the Metz just gave me such inconstancy that I thought my camera was defective. try it youll like it~