How do different skin tones respond to varied lighting conditions on digital cinema cameras, and how can this understanding be translated into more inclusive and effective cinematography teaching?
At UAL, my role involves teaching camera and lighting across five Film and Television courses at the LCC campus. This project is motivated both by my teaching experience and my ongoing freelance practice as a DOP and camera operator. I am frequently asked by students what the “correct” way to light skin tone is, or “how bright a person should be on camera”. These questions were also present during my own time as a student, where I received little to no direct guidance on how to approach lighting diverse skin tones in a meaningful or informed way. Research into cinematography pedagogy has shown that teaching camera exposure has historically taken Caucasian skin as the default reference point, shaping technical norms within film education (Sung, 2020).
I undertook this project after becoming increasingly aware that some of the explanations I was giving to students about lighting skin tones were not always fully inclusive. As a white working-class man from the centre of England, I must acknowledge and critically reflect on my own positionality and potential biases within my teaching practice. When I studied film production and lighting ten years ago, there was a general assumption about how people should be lit; specifically, camera zebra scales were almost always set to 70%. Throughout my professional career, this has remained the default setting on most digital cameras. This reflects a long-standing rule of thumb that white skin should be exposed at approximately 70%. This convention aligns with exposure practices developed using lighter skin tones as calibration references, a limitation imaging researchers now identify as problematic when applied to the diversity of human skin (Borek, 2025).
While this assumption has been partially revised—and manufacturers now often provide more diverse examples in their technical literature—I find that the idea that “people should be at 70%” continues to persist in practice. In my experience both within UAL and in professional contexts beyond the university, this remains a commonly held assumption. Despite growing academic recognition that traditional exposure standards were not designed to account for diverse skin tones (Borek, 2025).
Through this action research project, I aim to develop more useful and inclusive resources to better support students in navigating these questions. While I am not a person of colour, I approach this work with a strong sense of accountability and responsibility. I see this project as an opportunity to critically reflect on my teaching practice and redesign workshops in ways that are more considered, accurate, and socially responsible. This approach aligns with inclusive and decolonising curriculum frameworks, which seek to challenge historically dominant norms, diversify technical reference points, and ensure that teaching practices reflect the full range of student identities. As argued by Cathy Greenhalgh, cinematography education must ask “who is learning, who is teaching, and what examples and canons are most relevant,” calling for practices that actively foreground skin-tone diversity rather than treating it as an exception (Greenhalgh, 2020).
Goals / Outputs of the Project
- To expand the visual resource bank for teaching lighting people at UAL, reflecting the diversity of the student body.
- To improve students’ and my own understanding of how different skin tones react in a variety of lighting conditions.
- To create teaching resources documenting varied lighting effects on diverse skin tones, supporting BA and MA cinematography courses technical delivery.
- To deliver a workshop where students test lighting techniques on diverse skin tones, building practical understanding without prescribing “correct” outcomes.
- To approach the project reflexively and ethically, acknowledging my positionality and the limits of my perspective while avoiding prescriptive judgments.
Refs
Borek, M. (2025) ‘Improving image equity: representing diverse skin tones in photographic test charts for digital camera characterisation’, Electronic Imaging, 37(9), pp. 255-1–255-7. https://doi.org/10.2352/EI.2025.37.9.IQSP-255
Greenhalgh, C. (2020) ‘Skin tone and faces: cinematography pedagogy which foregrounds inclusivity and diversity in teaching lighting’, Cinematography in Progress, 5(1). Available at: https://www.cinematographyinprogress.com/index.php/cito/article/view/45
Sung, Y.-L. (2020) ‘Reading the light right: the exposure of Asian skin tones in cinematography’, Frames Cinema Journal, 17. Available at: https://framescinemajournal.com/article/reading-the-light-right-the-exposure-of-asian-skin-tones-in-cinematography/