I've only been shooting for 7 months, and have gotten quite good (and fast) at nailing my exposures in "safe" light, but am hoping someone might have some good tips for quickly dialing in your exposure, for people's faces, in backlit situations.

For safe light, I rely solely on my histo, and can dial it in perfectly. But in backlit situations, I'm unsure how to read the histo--how to use it as a tool for adjusting exposure. I know the histo will show an overexposed image, but how much overexposure do I allow? Should I be using the blinkies to help me?

Any thoughts or tips you might have is greatly appreciated.

Have you read Understanding Exposure?

That helped me a lot.

I second that. Bryan Peterson is brilliant and an awesome teacher. He also happens to be one of the most down to earth photographers on the planet.

Just purchased from Amazon. Thank you both.

If anyone has some quick tips, I'm still all ears. Eyes. Whatever.

Chad,

I don't use my histogram in my camera for setting exposure, so I'm not sure if this will help or not...but.. When I'm doing a backlit portrait, I will set my aperture first in Manual mode and then go in close to their face to get a meter reading without the backlighting. Adjust shutter speed until the camera indicates a proper exposure. Then step back, recompose and shoot away. It's pretty good about keeping highlights in check.

m

I was just going to ask this question earlier so thanks Chad!! Also buying the book and thank you Meredith for that tip

This is pretty much what I do if I don't have my hand held meter with me!

Rather than getting up close, you can stay further away and use your spot meter.

Using a handheld, incident meter won't take more than a few seconds though and looks more professional than chimping and saying, "Let's see how this looks."

Eventually you will figure out approximately how many stops to open up in that situation and it will be second-nature.

I use my spot meter too! It works really well... I don't pay attention to the histogram for these shots because it's not going to be reliable...

Maybe this is ghetto, but I put my camera into Aperature priority, set my aperature, take a shot (while camera is in spot metering mode). I check out what the LCD looks like and then flip it into manual to dial in these settings + or - a few based on what the exposure looks like to me...

Reading this back I bet there might be a better way, but I usually am just looking at my LCD and ignoring blinkies (you're going to get a whole lot of blinkies with backlit shots)

I often do the same. And depending on whether I want a silhouette or to blow out the background I adjust accordingly. Other times I use the light meter.

You can also use the exposure compensation button, which is what I do. I just know what I need when I am in the situation based on experience, but I prefer to comp up and down (push and pull).

I have the spot meter assigned to the Fn button on my D300 and D200 and when I am in a situation like this, I simply take a spot meter reading on their face and adjust for proper exposure. It's very fast and reliable. I am usually within 1/3-2/3 of a stop from the exposure I need, but I still check my histogram and blinkies to make sure nothing that I want is clipping.

This is all great advice, thank you. And, I'm off to get the book too!

Quick question - I've noticed that when I follow this technique I end up blowing out my background. I figure there must be something "fundamental" that I dont' understand that's causing this to happen.

To make sure I get the shot I've been auto-bracketing and that seems to work but now I've got 3 times as many shots to wade through. Does this sound familiar? If "yes" can you share with me what it is I'm not "getting" re: reading the light in these situations?

Sam,

If the contrast before foreground and background is severe, then you'll often blow out the background. But in most cases, I'd rather have a correctly exposed face and a blown out background. Look at this thread and you'll see several overexposed backgrounds. You'll also see some properly exposed, but many of those seem to have help from reflectors and flash.

The first thing people look at is a face. So the face, to me, is the most important element in a photo.

I don't think you're missing anything at all. That's just a decision you have to make--to make the artistically correct exposure, or use off-camera lighting to balance the exposures.

Naturally, when you expose for the face, and not the background, the background is going to be over-exposed. Or, if you expose for the background, you're going to get dark, muddy faces (or silhouettes).

Anyway, after reading the book (most stuff I already knew), he did have a few good tips, one of which is to use the face technique. Another is to get your exposure from the sky, away from the sun--to point your camera above, below, or to the side of the sun, and get your reading from there, and then recompose.

Now to practice...

Chad,

I'm glad you were able to pick up a few tips from the book. It's interesting to me all the different ways each of us goes about doing things to get the same result. After working with Bryan at a workshop, the biggest thing I took away was how easy and simply he goes about taking the most amazing pictures. Everyone does things their own way and by trying out different roads to the same destination, you'll figure out which road you like best.

M

Spot meter the face then switch to manual and dial in exposures by adjusting the shutter speed and sometimes the ISO.
And if you are not 100% sure about your exposure then you can shoot raw and adjust later.

Use fill flash. Set your flash to -3 and it'll work almost every time. And it won't look like you used flash.

Or do what people suggest above.

I shoot backlit all the time, into a very bright sky sometimes. What I usually do is frame my subject without the backlight, get my exposure right (in manual mode) and then shoot.

I can't stand the look of most fill flash, so I'll often do the following instead:

Experiment with the exposure latitude of your camera. The D3 is pretty amazing as far as dynamic range and lack of noise goes, so I know that I can often expose for the sky and have confidence that I'll be able to bring up the exposure of my subject in post-processing. If you're at high ISO, though, that's a recipe for terrible noise and bad color accuracy. Gotta know your individual camera to know how much you can stretch its range.

Just to pass on some cool info I got from Frank Cricchio a few years ago. On a sunny day, the shadow side of the face should read 18% gray. What this means is basically what most of you have been saying about spot metering the face, adjusting your exposure for that reading, then recomposing and taking the image. 18% gray is exactly what your reflective meters built in your cameras are calibrated for. So now you know why it works.... Also, 18% gray is only a guide, you can make adjustments according to your taste, and style of shooting, however, atleast you know that this is a standard that you can base your exposure process on..... Also, another good reason to keep and use an incident light meter