Dark diving, white skin

Sort of similar to Lambis's issues, but not. Trying to light a wreck and have some tone on the diver's face, tends to get skin tones too white. Solutions?

I'm guessing move strobe away? Longer arms? Send him to Hawaii?

I know this needs more cleanup as well.

Jack

Your model's skin appears nice and pink on my screen

The face may be a bit too pale, but a trip to Hawaii may not be necessary just yet. Cutting down on strobe power a tad would do just fine.

The really white part on the forehead seems to be the mask skirt... Next time, ask your model to use a mask with a black skirt

Change the color of the diver's hood and wetsuit/drysuit. (red, royal blue, anything other than black)

Shoot test shots in the pool

variables

-manual strobe power

-diffusers

-strobe to subject distance

-strobe placement and angle toward/away from subject

Make a shooting plan

When reviewing your test shots, pay close attention to skin tone

Make careful notes

Tweak your best techniques to get what you want (in camera, not in photoshop)

I think mattdiver is right the skirt on the top is making the skin look pale more on the forehead. The mask is way to big it is so high over the eyebrows. Pale skin is common on most divers you could select that area and play with the hues in photo shop. Anyay I think you exposure is good not a technical reason the skin is so pale.

use a black mask !

should help also imo...

Thanks for the replies.

This is a dive buddy, not a model, so changing his gear around, etc. isn't an option. Yeah, a bit overexposed and I can see if I can do something with the skirt in PS. It's hard to light a dark suit in a dark wreck environment and still have the skin not get over exposed. I still wonder about getting the strobe farther away from the camera as I'm seeing some strobe "flare".

All good input.

Jack

It's hard to light a dark suit in a dark wreck environment and still have the skin not get over exposed. I still wonder about getting the strobe farther away from the camera as I'm seeing some strobe "flare".

I don't know the settings you used on this shot, but what could also help in future is to increase your aperture a bit (or even a lot) and reduce the strobe power proportionately. This will achieve several things:

- Brighter background = better separation with the black wetsuit

- Less strobe = less flare/burnt highlight

- Less strobe = less risk of backscatter

- Less strobe = more shots per battery charge + faster recycle time

There's an excellent article on shooting in low viz in the current isue of UWP Magazine that explains this in detail (shameless self-plug!)