Dark dog on snow

[My2Girls66]

How can I expose the dog better? It was quite cloudy so the light wasn't good.

white balance- auto, 1/320, f/5.3, ISO 100

 

[annnewjerz]

I'm not sure, but you should be more concerned about the fact that your dogs is missing its legs!!!

 

[boBQuincy]

Your camera sees all the white snow and thinks "this should be gray" so it underexposes the scene. If your dog was all the camera saw it would try to make him gray too, overexposing the scene.

The answer is to increase the exposure about 2 stops to make the snow look white and hopefully that will be enough to lighten up the dog too.

I have a black & white cat and afaik there is no digital camera that can successfully capture that kind of range in one exposure, so the long answer is we must decide what in the scene is important and expose for that, letting the rest go into over or underexposure.

 

[My2Girls66]

It does look like she's missing her legs
+2 on the exposure comp- correct? Thanks, I'll try it

 

[ukcatfan]

If you are shooting in RAW, you can get a little more out of a challenging exposure like that. I would still lean towards exposing the snow correctly and then if the ISO was low enough, you can bump up the shadows without too much noise.

 

[JR6ooo4]

Filling more of the frame with the dog will help also.

Pets sure do seem to be one of the toughest subjects to photograph, eh?

Mikeeee

 

[My2Girls66]

She's particularly tough because not only is she very dk chocolate in color, she won't stay still or listen!
Would spot metering on her help? And would you also need to add compensation if the sun was out to whiten snow?
I tried shooting RAW and jpeg for awhile but to be honest I don't like editting at all- I don't have the patience for it- I never get around to it, not to mention I don't know how except the basics- redeye removal, blemish removal and cropping.

 

[Quicklabs]

Very, very difficult situation. It's hard to shoot black or chocolate Labs anyway and when they're moving like that, it's really hard.
Regardless, give that sweetie a hug from me!

 

[My2Girls66]

Very, very difficult situation. It's hard to shoot black or chocolate Labs anyway and when they're moving like that, it's really hard.

I've definitely noticed that my friend's yellow lab photographs much better than her in all situations- sun, clouds, indoors, flash...

Regardless, give that sweetie a hug from me!!

Done She is so darned spoiled!
Today we took her out to the town forest in 18"+ of fresh snow. She had a ball. Just loves to stick her face right into the snow! So cute

 

[GrillMouster]

...Would spot metering on her help?...

Spot metering the dog would make the camera try to render her at at 18% grey, which she's not; she's black. In other words, it would overexpose the scene and likely "blow out" the snow. The solution would be to use negative exposure compensation (-2 is a good place to start for a black object) or spot meter the snow and use positive exposure compensation (+2 is a good place to start for a bright white object).