Beginner How do take a picture in the daylight against a black backdrop??

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Emma Burns
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Can anybody help me. I'm new to photography and there's alot i need to learn still. I need to know how to take a picture against a black backdrop in the daytime. When i take a picture without using the flash, the backdrop is very light and not black :-\ HELP...
 
Two things..
  • In the day time the backdrop is being illuminated by ambient lighting - to get a black background (even with a black cloth) you need to have more light on your subject than on the background.
  • Your camera meter may be deliberately exposing the black as grey, this is normal - your camera is programmed to assume that anything you point it at should be grey. Consequently you need to take control of the exposure (either manually or using exposure compensation) to tell the camera to underexpose the black cloth.
The technical bits behind all of this would take a very long post.. but the first point is the key. You need more light to be falling on your subject than on the background - that could be as simple as placing the background under a shadow whilst the subject stands in the sunlight.
 
my set up is in my conservatory you see so i have alot of natural light coming in. Would i need to use my lights as well as the natural light? Yes the black cloth looks grey once I've taken a picture.
 
my set up is in my conservatory you see so i have alot of natural light coming in. Would i need to use my lights as well as the natural light? Yes the black cloth looks grey once I've taken a picture.
What lights do you have?

As you can see from the video, you need to be able to overpower the ambient. That can be done with crap continuous lights when it's dark out. But at noon in July it takes a lot of flash power.
 
What Phil V said. Shoot in manual to enable you complete control. Low ISO, then just chimp and adjust as you go. I'd start with shutter at sync speed (200 or 250/sec) and walk the aperture from low numbers to high until I got the black background I wanted, only then add in the flash - bearing in mind that you'll need a lot of power if it's bright outside. Oh, and make sure that you're not spraying flash onto the background and undoing all the prep work! :) Good luck.
 
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