Turn off auto exposure. Try to find an exposure setting that is a happy medium.

My auto exposure is ALWAYS off, unless I need a quick adjustment. Thanks for the replies.

I guess what I'm asking is, is there such a thing as an acceptable level of superwhites. Most of my customers don't care if the highlights are a little blown out as long as faces are correctly exposed. Also, I will generally be transferring the DV tape to a standalone DVD recorder. Is there any way to clamp the whites while transferring without reducing the range of contrast?

I run into this situation all the time when transferring film to video. There is just too much dynamic range (latitude) in the film compared to what video can handle. Wedding photographers deal with this all the time (bride in white, groom in black tux). Their solution is to use super low-contrast film.

My "solution" is to expose for the highlights, and then fix the shadows (in your case, the dark skin) in post production. My reasoning is that you cannot recover detail from highlights that are overexposed, but you can often recover quite a bit from the shadows.

Use the zebra function on your camera (if it has one) during shooting to make sure you capture the highlights. Use Color Curves to create your own custom gamma curve and you should be able to get pretty good results. Also, to the extent you can control the lighting, so you have even illumination, this will keep from turning a difficult situation into an impossible one.

My "solution" is to expose for the highlights...

This is where we differ. I'd rather get a good facial exposure and blow out the highlights. I realize that you can't get back what's not there but I'd rather do that than try to bring up the shadows (i.e. noise).

Mike

John, I agree with you. In 99 out of 100 cases, I would also expose for the highlights, except in this case. The faces are more important than the shirts.

I would also expose for the highlights, except in this case. The faces are more important than the shirts.

I can't disagree with either of you, given how important faces are in this situation. Also, it's a heck of a lot easier to do (expose for the faces) than worry about the blown highlights, which can come and go depending on what moves into the scene.

You might want to try contrast or light diffusion filters on the lens.

Tiffen has a series of glass to try to control contrast, here:
http://www.tiffen.com/results.html?search_type_no=369&tablename=filters&family=Tiffen+Filters&search_filter_format=Screw-In

I've had some luck with the "Low Contrast" series.

I've also had some success with a fog filter. It helps to ease into the highlights instead of completely blowing them out. The effect is similar to what you'll see in a scene in a film with a strong backlight. It might be a nice effect for a church video. Try the lowest number filter or it's generally too much.

Mike

Yay MOOT!

IF it were an issue of lighting I'd say this: Lighting dark skin is much like lighting any dark semigloss surface. Dark skin shows reflections very well and the best course is to use large white panels to reflect in the skin. Just like a car shot where you see the white panels in the surface of the car.

However, if you have no control of the light and they insist on wearing white gowns...It's going to have to be done with the camera. Other nice folk here wil have good ideas, I think.

You might look into higher end cameras to rent. Take this problem to a good rental house and ask them what they think. I'm guessing that with a good camera you can tweak the curves before you even start shooting. If this is the solution then the next problem is one of money...

Rob Mack

Some select cameras have options to tweak the gamma curve/response (DVX100, maybe the DVC30) or the knee settings.

The video knee applies a linear transfer function to highlights instead of a power function of 0.45. This basically squeezes all that highlight information into the upper range of the video signal. The downside to this is that you can get knee artifacts... saturated colors get funky (funky being the technical term).

Even cheap consumer cameras already have a video knee. On higher-end cameras, the knee is more adjustible.

On some higher-end cameras, there are also r, g, and b gain controls (at least there is on the Panasonic HDC20 / DVCPRO HD). The Cinealta (even higher end) actually has manually adjustible curves.

Camera-wise (ignoring filters and other solutions), the best camera may be the DVX100 as it has the cinegamma feature. I think it gives you extra exposure latitude without knee artifacts (because it doesn't do the same thing as knee functions do). I still think you'd have the problem though.

2- You can always make it look intentional (i.e. glow).