Red Stage Lights/Blown Out Faces (1 Viewer)

[RSJ]

Anyone got any tips? Went out last night to take some photos at the Strange Brew 200th night thing, and there was some serious blown out faces due to some heavy red lighting. The lights in roisin are actually much better than they were, but i'm still pretty unhappy with what i got. Any tips?

 

[magicbastarder]

blown out as in bleached red?

 

[RSJ]

Yeah. it's a curse.

 

[magicbastarder]

dunno - i imagine those lights are monochromatic, which means you'd be as well off using b&w.
i'm just trying to figure out in my head whether there might be an issue with the exposure your camera is calculating is required being thrown by a monochromatic light source, or whether that makes no difference.

 

[ICUH8N]

I highly doubt that red spotlighting is throwing off your meter, it's far more likely that your meter's being fooled by all the blacky blackness around it on the stage, especially if it's set to averaging mode/doing some sort of snazzy matrix metering where it looks at the whole scene; it sees the bright red, but it also sees lots of darkness, and you end up with way too much exposure. Careful metering (with a proper spot meter) and manual exposure or using AE lock and the camera's built-in spot meter while pointing it at a red-lit face (as opposed to just letting the camera do its best guess thing) should both sort you out, or you can just dial down the exposure compensation a couple of stops if you feel like living on the edge.

 

[Goff]

What camera you using? Try using Auto Exposure Bracketing after trying the spot metering thing suggested by ICUH8N? Find out what you should be over or under exposing by? (This, if it's digital).

Try to meter from your opem palm if you can get it with roughly the same light as you're trying to catch, lock the exposure, and bracket from that.

 

[magicbastarder]

it might help if you were to upload some of the pics, and diagnosis might be easier.

 

[pete]

in future just bring an extremely bright white light and shine it in their faces

 

[magicbastarder]

I highly doubt that red spotlighting is throwing off your meter

my (nebulous) thinking was that if you have a source that is emitting white light sufficient to (say) 90% expose all three layers of colour film, a source of the same intensity, of monochromatic red light - which the camera might meter the same way - would be sufficient to expose the red layer to 270% of its maximum exposure.

 

[quasiquasi]

Is this the kind of thing you're talking about?

I guess it's a white balance question but I'm not sure what to do about it. If spot metering, what part of the scene should one meter from?

 

[RSJ]

That's the one. I did some research and people say the D70 (my camera) meters on greens and blues, but overexposes reds by about 3ev. Still thought, i shoot in manual so it shouldn't matter. I'm no expert in light or cameras or anything of that manner, but i do know that reds bleach out highlights, that's why creepy dive bars, strip clubs and districts of ill repute use red light - it flattens out the skin, making wrinkes, lines, blemishes (i.e. characteristics) disappear.

 

[magicbastarder]

also, if you've photoshop, and colour photos of people, and want them greyscale, instead of just doing a standard convert to grayscale command, you can just select the red channel. very flattering on skin tones, but gives a lot of people devil eyes.