Also take into account the person's skin tone with that flash meter. With dark skin, you may want to open it up a couple of stops. Targeting one stop above middle gray is common for caucasian skin tone. But of course that all depends on your portrait.
And note, too, a yellow filter will help darken some female lipstick color which is good for separating the lips from skin tone. Pentax made a YG (yellow/green) filter for portraits. You may want to avoid girls having deep red lipstick with a filter that has some green in it; otherwise, you may end up with black lips and a gothic look which may or may not be what you want.
I used a
yellow filter for this shot. So I opened the lens up two stops from the flash meter readings. One for the filter and one to place her skin at a higher value. Her lipstick color worked well with the filter. If I recall it was a pinkish-red.
Last edited by tuco; 10-25-2010 at 07:51 AM.