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Comment by chillacy | Hacker News Reader

I recall being amused maybe 3 years ago when I took a picture of two friends, one with dark skin, one with light skin, and the camera choose to expose for the darker skin. He looked fine, the lighter skin friend looked like snow lit by headlights. Completely washed out.

The camera settings and background lighting make a big difference.

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FYI: Wedding photographers deal with the contrast between white dresses and black suits/tuxedos every day, for the last century.

Some notes:

- the eye can handle the dynamic range, but there's no correct exposure for that photographic combination, so they play with lighting, exposure bracketing and dodging when printing

- it's recommended that brides wear off-white (like cream) or other colors of fabric if they're concerned about the photos

Isn't the solution to this to take 2 photos and merge them later?

If nobody moves - go for it.

That's exactly what (exposure) bracketing is for. You take three photos at different exposures and merge them. This is also how a lot of HDR photography is done.

A RAW photo (raw input from the camera sensor, without processing) can often be used in post production to get more range out of a photo than would be possible with a JPEG. One of my desktop backgrounds I often use was actually quite overexposed due to the sun shining through trees. I was able to correct for it in Lightroom and it's now one of my favorite shots.

That's one way, but a lot of work for more than one photo. Going from setting adjustment to photoshopping is a huge step-up up in terms of labor and cost.

And that is why you pay a wedding photographer instead of just asking uncle Herbert to take some pretty pictures with his DSLR.

Mind you, the hobbyist uncle may produce great photos an may be a wizard with lightroom and photo shop. But a lot of hobbyists try to compensate with gear for skill, or more charitable may not be even aware of related skills an possibilities. So in the end the snapshots your friend Andy took with his 2 year old iPhone might look better (have better automatic processing) than those photos Herbert took with his expensive prosumer or even pro kit.

Which is why photographers ignore autoexposure and instead meter on a known reference such as an 18% grey card, or green grass.

I learned that one convention group I'm a part of converged on very visible glossy white badge cards not just because it is easy to sharpie names visibly on (in classic "Hello my name is" style), but also out of a request from the photography group as it is a very useful meter reference visible in almost every photo of any group member.

Seeing how many great photos come out of the event in sometimes very strange lighting conditions (as you might expect from an event that includes everything from brightly lit outdoors events to indoor conference spaces and theaters to rock show-lit concerts, and everything in between), I'd imagine that little metering trick is doing wonders.

Oh just thought of another example: bodybuilders apply heavy tan to look darker on stage. It helps muscles show better under heavy stage lighting.

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-all-bodybuilders-tan-Do-they-u...

Was this on a DSLR/MILC? My Sony seems to do this sometimes when I have a very dark and very light subject outside but it's usually fine in RAW.

On my A7S2 I simply use the exposure correction wheel in such situations - or use the exposure series function so I can mess around with HDR later in Photoshop.

Yeah I usually just use exposure comp too, it works pretty well most of the time but candids when everyone's moving and the background is changing can be pretty hard without a fill flash to help out a bit. Thank god for iso invariance though.

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