Dealing with snow?

[New Hampshire]

While I have not taken to shooting scenes with snow in it yet, can anyone give advice on dealing with it exposure wise? I hear this can be tough, especially when you are dealing with darker backgrounds and/or dark subjects (like wildlife, etc.)

Brian

P.S. I use 35mm film if that makes a difference.

 

[fmw]

Sure, understand that your meter tries to expose your image for medium gray or colors with the luminosity of medium gray. That means the meter will tend to underexpose snow. Open up a stop or two, depending on what percentage of the subject is snow.

 

[New Hampshire]

Thank you very much!!

Brian

 

[Karikalan]

I was also having the same question in mind. But I want to go a little deeper.
Is it possible to shoot a long shot over snow against sun.
If yes, please let me know how? . I tried few shots . But somehow I make subject go dark.
But Often I see in photos of professional photograpers / commerical photos, They get quite good image of both the subject , snow and a bright sun.
let say like sking/snoboard....
How do they set it.
thank you in advance.

 

[Karikalan]

FYI :- I have also tried with a Tele zoom.
And I am using a Canon AV1 FD Manual camera.
Unfortunately we didnt get much snow to make frequent trial this year !

 

[ksmattfish]

I can think of 4 options for dealing with a back lit subject:

Expose for the background, leave the subject dark.

Expose for the subject, background whites out.

Combine the 2 above exposures in Photoshop.

Use fill flash (this is probably what the pro is doing), or some other fill light (reflectors).

 

[ksmattfish]

If you want to expose for shadow detail, try metering something black (pants, camera bag, etc...) that's in the same level of lighting as your subject, and underexpose 2 stops from that reading. That will work well for print film. If you are shooting slides or digital test to see if that's too much. Maybe only under-expose 1.5 stops from a reading off black.

 

[Jeremy Z]

If you search on threads started by me, there are some pix I shot of some snowboarding action. I generally overexpose by 1.5 stops.

Another trick is to take a light reading off of something that is in similar light to your subject, exclusing the snow. Set the camera for that exposure and fire away. (or use the AEL, if your camera is automatic exposure)

 

[nevilleb]

Assuming you're metering using Canon's evaluative or Nikon's Matrix metering, you could follow these guidelines if the overall scene averages lighter than midtone:

1. If it is a bright day, and the scene is not in shade, go with what the meter suggests.

2. If it is cloudy, or the scene is in shade, add up to 2/3rd stops of light for scenes that are slightly light, upto 1 1/3 stops for scenes that are very light, and upto 2 stops for scene that average to almost white.

If you're shooting in spot or partial metering, meter off the brightest part of the scene, decide what tone you want to assign to that part and bump up the exposure accordingly.

Hope that helps

nevilleb

 

[Karikalan]

Thank you very much ... all your Tips help me a lot to imagine the situation. Hopefully I can make good photoos for my next visit for sking.
Thank you

 

[Imagee]

One last thought. Since you are dealing with film and don't have the luxury of checking your histogram...Bracket, by shooting metered, then up from there (no need to bracket downward for snow scenes).

 

[Torus34]

http://www.thephotoforum.com/node/47