Quote Originally Posted by marko View Post
Tegan's approach of spotmetering the face is decent but not foolproof, and should not be used in a vacuum without fully understanding exposure.
Yes, spotmetering gets you closer to the correct exposure than just using the automatic metering. The real trick is to balance the exposure of the dark faces with the often bright background.

For fine tuning the shooting of dark faces, a higher ISO will reduce contrast, an ND filter or polarizer will bring the extremes of exposure closer together, and tighter framing (Marko style) will also result in more even exposure as well. As Marko also indicated metering is based on grey, so it is also necessary to avoid over-exposing the faces.

A very fast and easy method is to shoot to slightly overexpose by about half a stop and then in post use Viveza to bring out more detail in the dark faces. No layering or masking is necessary.

Tegan