Noise/Grain with Snow

[Womble]

Hi all,

I have a problem with a bunch of photos I have taken in bright snow conditions. I set the ISO to 100 manually and let the camera choose aperature and shutter speed.

Apperature is always f/8 and shutter speed seems to vary from 1/1000 up to 1/1600.

But all my photos have come out grainy. I really don't understand what I have done wrong.

I am posting a link to an image which has the full EXIF details included as well.

http://andrew.net.au/~rowan/P1210757.JPG

Thanks.

Womble

 

[radiorickm]

I really don't think they are grainy. What they are, is under exposed.

Shooting in snow is one of the surefire ways to confuse your lightmeter. It sees all the WHITE out there and says WOW it's bright. So, it doesn't let in enough light.
This is one of the conditions where you have to out smart the camera and override the setting, by applying exposure compenstation.

Good luck

 

[tirediron]

^^Exactly! Your camera's light-meter is designed such that it assumes everything is middle grey. When the bulk of the frame is significantly brighter or darker, than it gets confused and exposure-compensation is required.

 

[Big Mike]

Welcome to the forum.

The above posts are spot on. The shot is severely underexposed, and under exposure is a sure way to get noise to show up in your photos.

There are a few different ways to get around this problem (the problem being that your camera's meter can be tricked).
One way would be to spot meter on your subjects. This would allow your camera to ignore most of the snow in the frame and base the exposure off of the subject. But this will only get your 'proper' exposure if your subject is the same tone as middle grey.
Another method would be to remember that snow, being a lot brighter than middle grey, will fool the meter, causing under exposure...so you would need to add exposure via exposure compensation (or use manual mode and adjust the settings to get the 'needle' above the zero.
Yet another method would be to use a grey card. I've got a good example on my blog...How to use a Grey Card ~ Mike Hodson Photography