Certified Professional Photographer (CPP) Practice Exam

For optimal portrait exposure, which skin characteristic should be metered?

1. The eye color

2. The hair color

3. The skin tone

4. The background color

The correct answer is: The skin tone

Metering for optimal portrait exposure is essential for achieving accurate skin tones, making skin tone the primary characteristic to focus on when setting exposure. Skin tone varies significantly between individuals and can significantly influence how the overall image appears. Properly metering the skin tone ensures that the highlights and shadows are well-rendered, allowing the natural tones of the skin to appear true to life. When metering on skin tone, it is important to consider the average tone of the subject's skin. By doing so, you can expose appropriately for the highlights in the skin, preventing overexposure that can lead to a loss of detail, especially if the subject has lighter skin. Conversely, it can also help mitigate underexposure in darker skin tones, ensuring that the full range of tones is captured. Focusing on other characteristics, such as eye color, hair color, or background color, may not yield the same effectiveness in achieving accurate skin tones. These factors do not provide a reliable basis for overall exposure because they can vary independently of the skin tone, which directly affects the subject's appearance in portrait photography. Thus, metering on skin tone is the key to capturing portraits that reflect the essence of the subjects accurately.