Exposure question

[drippinhun]

I've been asked to photograph an groundbreaking ceremony. It's going to be early-mid morning (10:00am). The ribbon cutting is going to be held under one of two conditions.

First, the four participants will be under a pavillion (three white people and one very dark, but the most important one to get facial detail) and I will be shooting, facing the direction of where the sun is coming from, in the sun or; all of us will be outside of the pavillion and all of the subjects will be backlit by the sun.

I have a Canon 20D and will be using either a 35-105mm 3.5 to 4.5 or a 28mm 4.0 lens.

I'm not sure if I should leave it on automatic, as I do not own a light meter. Any suggestions would be helpful on how to get the correct exposure. I also have Photoshop to clean up if there is a solvable problem.

I did a shoot like this once before, but the faces were so dark I couldn't salvage any of the pictures.

 

[Battou]

Your camera has a built in meter, you should be able set it to manual metering I think. That would definately be your best bet.

 

[ksmattfish]

Stage the set up for some test shots right before the ceremony, or the day before at the same time so the light is the same. Have someone stand in the spot your subjects will be in. Unless you are filling the frame with their faces I'd be much more concerned as to the tone of their clothing than their skin. From your description of the situation I'd probably start out at -1 stop background, and +1 stop on the flash if shooting the whole scene with full bodies and sky. As you zoom in tighter to the people that will change depending on the strength of the back lighting. I start out with the +1 flash because the bright sky is going to fool the meter. Some test shots will allow you to dial in the right power. I agree that doing it in manual is going to be a lot less squirrelly than any sort of auto mode. You will probably have much better luck with an actual strobe than just the in-camera pop-up flash. Preferably a model with high speed sync.