Re:Shirley Cards
by i_am_proteus on Monday November 15, 2021 @03:53AM
(#29225219)
You absolutely can shoot two people with different skin tones side-by-side, but it requires some skill.
I invite you to look through various press photographs of Martin Luther King Jr. meeting Lyndon Johnson. Some of them do a very good job of capturing both men; others don't.
It is going to be incredibly difficult to get two people , in the same light, to be that many stops apart just by virtue of their skin if you're correctly exposed.
If you're under or over exposed, someone might clip out sooner , but a well exposed image will have enough latitude to capture both.
In photography, exposure is the amount of light per unit area (the image plane illuminance times the exposure time) reaching a frame of photographic film or the surface of an electronic image sensor, as determined by shutter speed, lens aperture, and scene luminance. Exposure is measured in lux seconds, and can be computed from exposure value (EV) and scene luminance in a specified region. [1]
Image lightness can be affected by both exposure and ISO. But since film had a reduced dynamic range, the truth is it can't reproduce reliable both dark tones and skin tones at the same time. It's a technical limitation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_(photography)
>You absolutely do not need HDR photography to shoot darker skin with lighter skin. In fact most cameras have enough dynamic range today to deal without an HDR capture.
Actually if you have two individuals side by side, one with dark skin, one with white skin you can't shoot both at the same time and have both look good if the lighting is the same.
Cameras can record at most 14 - 15 Evs of dynamic range. The difference between the light falling on those two persons is more than that.