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Lighting & Filming Darker Skin Tones with ARRI Signature Primes

Cinematographer Michelle Clementine demonstrates exposure and lighting adjustments specifically for rendering darker skin tones with detail and dimension. An important, often-overlooked topic for every set.

B&H Photo Video Pro Audio · 12 min · Intermediate · LGT · Lighting · 2019

What you take away

Expose for the skin you're actually lighting — don't rely on a default exposure formula built around lighter skin tones.

Watch it

Filed under

Films to study for light

Books on lighting

Kit for this lesson

Sony FE 50mm F1.2 GM — A stop and a half past normal
Sony FE 24-70mm F2.8 GM II — The standard zoom most FX bodies wear
Sony FE 16-35mm F2.8 GM II — The wide end of the same set
Canon RF 50mm F1.2 L USM — The portrait-adjacent normal
Rosco Cinegel filter pack — CTB, CTO, diffusion — the colours a set runs on
Aputure MT Pro — A pocket pixel tube

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