Cheyenne1

[Evertking]

No, I usually never touch the exposure slider. I think I pulled down the highlights though.
The shots were dark but I noticed later that I had not changed metering mode and left it to spot metering. When I was setting up the shot. I set my camera to sync speed and took shots and adjusted my apreture till I got a black frame and with a handheld meter, I set my light to match my apreture.
Im not sure if leaving my camera on spot metering would cause issues or not.
But that is the process I used. And any help or advice is welcome.
Thank you

Here's a sample from the forehead on the original and the histogram of same.
View attachment 167670View attachment 167672 Notice the blue area where midtones (skin) doesn't have a lot of detail and nothing in the highlights. Now compare to below where the exposure was bumped by 1.3 stops in post
View attachment 167673 View attachment 167674
From the original raw you can bump exposure to a point and raise the shadow/midtone, but there's a limit.

I know there are some out there that advocate exposing left and raising the shadows post, but IMO the transitions between tones is not as smooth and there's more noise in the darker areas than the image that was exposed correctly or one to the right. Ideally you would want a histogram something similar to this
View attachment 167676 but bearing in mind that in the real world, this isn't always possible. So you shoot for maximum data. Going dark and moody low key, I'd likely expose right, with maximum data your then free to edit the file as you please.

Yeah, I definitely see the improvement and I don't know why but exposing to the right is something I associated with natural light and landscape shooting. Thank you VERY much for taking the time to help me, I appreciate it very much.
Need to slow down and think and pay attention to my histogram. You know, now that I think about it, when I finish or think I am done with a image I do not pay attention to the histogram. When I start to edit, I will set the white and black point and even then if I don't like the result I will not do it.