Snow Photos

[DisneyDetective]

I have a Canon 400D DSLR and i'm going on holiday soon. alot of the scenery/landscape will be covered in snow, do you have any hints/tips on how to get the best out of my camera?

thank you

 

[BirdsOfPreyDave]

When we had a good snow covering earlier this winter, which doesn't happen that often here in coastal Virginia, I found a couple of good blog posts that helped me out.

Here are a few that were helpful: http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2013/01/07/photographing-snow-the-simple-way-to-nail-exposure/

http://www.nyfalls.com/article-photographing-snow.html

For most of my shots, I had exposure compensation set at +2, and got some good results.

 

[mom2rtk]

I would shoot in RAW or add a bit of exposure compensation in your settings. In a scene with a lot of white, it is common for the camera to compensate by underexposing the photo a bit.

 

[Shutterbug]

For exposure, I have metered off an object that had the same light falling on it then locked the exposure and recomposed. I have also done what others have said and increased my exposure setting. I usually go about 1 to 1 1/2 stops over then adjust if I need to in post process. Plus shoot in raw.

According to Bryan Peterson's book Understanding Exposure, if you have alot of blue sky, he says to meter off the blue sky, lock in exposure and recompose and take the pic. I have not really tried this because here in NE Ohio you don't get much blue sky in the winter.

 

[boBQuincy]

Bracketing is a good method to get good exposures in challenging situations. The good part about digital is that bracketing does not cost anything, other than memory card space. Your camera can be set to take three exposures at different settings. Starting with 0, +1, +2 will probably get good exposures for snow scenes.

White balance can be a problem with snow and cloudy skies, it would be best to use RAW to give you the most flexibility in adjusting WB later if necessary.

 

[Ladygoldenhair]

Exactly what setting is "in Raw?"
Is this on a DSLR or point n shoot options?

 

[photo_chick]

Exactly what setting is "in Raw?"
Is this on a DSLR or point n shoot options?

It's a DSLR option and some higher end point and shoots (particularly the bridge cameras) also offer the ability to shoot RAW. It's essentially a file that saves the data before it's processed into a jpeg in the camera. Then you take the RAW file to the computer and adjust settings how you want them. Many of us do this because once things like white balance, saturation, sharpening.. etc are applied in camera and saved as a jpeg it is more difficult to make changes to those things later. RAW also makes it much easier to make global changes to exposure in editing than when you start with a jpeg. There are other reasons we shoot RAW as well, like to avoid jpeg compression.

I have a Canon 400D DSLR and i'm going on holiday soon. alot of the scenery/landscape will be covered in snow, do you have any hints/tips on how to get the best out of my camera?

thank you

Snow is one place I get my handy dandy gray card out to meter off of.