[Leica] Exposure for Photographing people who have dark skin

[pklein at 2alpha.net (Peter Klein)]

To the classic photographic problems of the white cat in the snow and the 
black cat in the coal mine, add the very dark-skinned black bride in a 
white dress. I had to deal with this last summer, when my cousin married 
this gorgeous lady:
http://users.2alpha.com/~pklein/family/2-34Antionette.htm

I remember pointing the M6's (imaginary) meter circle at her, so that half 
of it was on her dress and half of it was on her skin.  Which worked, but 
since she's very dark and the dress was very white, her skin was right on 
the edge of underexposure with T400CN film.  If I had it to do over again, 
I would have opened up 1/2 stop or 1 stop, just to get a little less noise 
in the facial shadows.  I can get a great 8x10 out of this negative, 
scanned at 4000 dpi, but anything bigger and the noise starts to show up.

On the other hand, if I was using Tri-X for this picture, I probably would 
have stayed with the exposure I got, or only opened up 1/2 stop.

Cautiously,
--Peter

>Ted Grant said:
> >>>> However, I did neglect to say that when using the M7's and finding
> >> myself in this people situation I just look through the viewfinder,
> >> check shutter speed and generally go... "click!"
> >>
> >> And that's even more simple. ;-)<<<<<<<<<
>
>Slobodan Dimitrov responded: ;-)
>
> > You're shameless!<<<
>
>Yeah I know, but cautious. :-)
>
>ted