Need advice for taking snow pictures

[DiracFeynman]

Hi all,

Can you please give me some advice for shooting winter (snow) scenes? Are there certain white balance settings or lenses I should use?

thanks in advance

[Charandane]

The best thing to do is bracket your exposures. You will typically have to compensate between 1 and 2 stops because your meter will read the white snow as middle grey. Just experiment with the specific light at the time and you will soon find the correct exposure. Filters are not a necessity for taking photos in snow, the exposure is what matters. Good luck and enjoy the snow.

[mikeyinsunnyfla]

Originally Posted by DiracFeynman

Hi all,

Can you please give me some advice for shooting winter (snow) scenes? Are there certain white balance settings or lenses I should use?

thanks in advance

my advise is not to shoot snow.... move down here to sunny florida .
8)

mikey

I haven't done this in a while (years) and I'm going on just memory, but I believe that you should get the meter reading from the subject rather than the snow. the reason being that if you measure the light from the snow, the meter will either tell the automatic aperture that there's too much light and will stop down the lens so that the pic will have a dark subject against a white background or if you're already at max shutter speed, the meter will cut off the extra light so fast that the subject will be dark.

however, if your subject is the snow itself (i.e. - snowscapes, all snow, or macro shots of snow), then, by all means take the meter reading off the snow. This doesn't apply to landscape shots of glaciers, mountains with snow, or snow as the background against your main subject.

if your subject is in the center of the pic, just use spot or center-weighted metering for the shot. if the subject is off center and the snow is in the center of the pic, you will need to switch to manual mode and use either aperture priority or shutter speed priority to overide the spot/centerweighted metering of the snow. while you're at it, since you don't have to worry about film, take lots of shots (just for the heck of it) to add to your personal knowledge/expertise of mastering the art of shooting in snow. hope this helps....have fun....

[Jim Ghiringhelli]

the answer is simple! Fly to Hawaii and take your pics. Be sure to take a circular polarizing filter.

the exposure technique for shooting snow scenes is the same for sand. they both throw out a lot of light. it doesn't make any difference whether you live in Florida, Hawaii, Aspen in winter, Tahoe in winter, or the Sahara Desert.

[solo]

Bracket your exposure, especially giving it + since the large amount of snow will fool the meter in letting in less light.

The best is just a lot of experimenting with your own camera to know what it likes best...

[Jim Ghiringhelli]

does a polarizing filter help with snow photos?

Originally Posted by Jim Ghiringhelli

does a polarizing filter help with snow photos?

yes and no.

yes, a polarizer will make things "punch out" more vividly and reduce some glare.

no, it won't kill the overdose of light reflecting from the snow. for that, you need to take your exposure reading off the darker subject in order to get the right exposure otherwise, the extra light will make all the dark areas real dark.

again, i'm going by my memory since I haven't shot snow in a number of years.