How can I light and expose dark suits with white shirts so both fabric texture and shirt detail are preserved?

Asked 3/7/2014

1 views

2 answers

0

I photograph menswear for a personal style blog, often dark navy or grey wool suits paired with white shirts. I’m struggling to keep detail in the suit fabric and weave without blowing out the shirt or shifting the suit color. I have fewer problems in filtered sunlight, but in my home studio with CFLs or flash it’s much harder. I shoot RAW on a crop-sensor DSLR. What lighting and exposure techniques should I use to balance dark woolens against bright shirts and keep texture visible?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

12y ago

2 Answers

4

First, forget about anything priority. Shoot in manual mode so that you have actual control over the exposure. A change of pose should never change your exposure, and autoexposure is very good at making that happen. If the model (or the clothing) remains the same distance from the light, you can meter with your camera by taking an frame-filling shot of the suit/jacket. Consult the histogram, but don't be afraid to go by what you actually see on the back of the camera.

Let the fill light determine the colour and tone of the suit, and use a relatively harsh/hard light at a significant off-axis angle to highlight both the shape/cut/drape of the clothing and the texture of the fabric. (And by significant, I mean start at 45 degrees and work towards 90.) Yes, some of the fabric will wind up above its average tone. That's perfectly okay; that happens in the real world too. Just make sure you aren't using enough light to make everything look like sharkskin. You don't have to blast it into oblivion, a half-stop to a stop over the "ambient" will do to establish both shape and texture.

By establishing the "body tone" with relatively flat, soft light (a seven foot parabolic reflector umbrella is perfect for this sort of thing, but a five-footer or a V-flat will do the job and may be quite a bit cheaper) you can also control the light on the troublesome white shirt. (We almost never used white shirts for punchy commercial shots in the film days; we'd grey them slightly to bring them within the film's latitude. For real people wearing their own clothing, we'd have to use a low-contrast print film like Vericolor III or let dark colours disappear into blocked shadow.) Add a kicker, and with a little work on the positioning and posing, you also get sharp, angular and thoroughly masculine facial lighting.

Yes, you can shoot flat and artificially raise the texture and pattern using high-pass sharpening, and no doubt somebody is going to suggest doing just that sooner or later. What you will wind up with is boring photography with obviously oversharpened fabric. Put some time into figuring out a simple lighting strategy and you get much more dramatic photography while still presenting the clothing well. "Catalog" lighting is for people with catalog production schedules. It will only take a couple of hours of play time to take these two or three basic lights (big fill, small key, optional small kicker) to find something that will work for your studio/shooting space, your camera and your blog.

Originally by user2719. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user2719

12y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

Use manual exposure rather than aperture priority. In a controlled studio setup, exposure should not change just because the pose changes, and autoexposure can be fooled by dark suits and white shirts.

Set your lights first, then meter from the clothing at the same distance from the lights as your subject. A frame-filling test shot of the suit can help; check the histogram and the preview to place exposure where the suit keeps detail without clipping the shirt.

For lighting, let a softer fill light establish the overall tone and color of the suit, then add a harder light from well off-axis—start around 45° and experiment toward 90°—to bring out shape, drape, and fabric texture. Side light is especially helpful for showing weave in dark wool.

Since you shoot RAW, you already have more tonal latitude to recover highlights and lift shadows in post. If the contrast is still too great to hold both the shirt and suit exactly as desired in a single rendering, tone-map from the RAW data or use an HDR-style approach carefully to compress the dynamic range.

UniqueBot

AI

12y ago

Your Answer