COULD I HAVE WHITE SNOW PLEASE

[Rob Beard]

Hi Folks, Went up into the snowy Peak District last Friday, it was dull, sky was grey as grey, and it was very, very windy, did I mention grey. I know the pics are not very interesting. Is the snow grey because the sky is reflecting off it, as the side of the car is pretty whitish (sky not reflecting off it).

The second picture is a slide going back to 1969 on a very sunny day, it was taken on a Kodak Roll Film camera, which I suppose was new then.

Do I have to adjust the white balance at all, thank Rob.

[Rob Beard]

Old Slide scan from 1969.

[E.T]

Well... isn't it gray what even snow looks in cloudy day?

And it's white balance which affects to colors, cloudy day with snow is really hard combination... depending on camera it might have custom white balance function which you could use with white/neutral paper to allow camera calculate best setting but even then it's hard.
You could try auto white/color balance features of your photo processing softare to see would result look better to you.


And even that other pic has some blue color cast if you look color of car or ground without snow.

[BillDrew]

As ET noted, a bit of a blue cast is expected and normal in snow. I've never had much luck adjusting the camera's white balance for snow so adjust it afterwards. The technique I favor is to adjust each of the RGB channels in Levels independently. With most snow pictures, there is a "cliff" on the right side of the histogram. I simply adjust each of the RGB channels so the "cliff" comes at the same place - near the right edge.This works wellif the image is not blown out.

There are lots of other techniques, none of which (mine included)work in all cases. Mine fails if the image is blown out.

My result looks like this:

[VTphotog]

In your slide, the brightest thing in it is the snow. In your first picture, the reflections on the car headlight are the brightest, so the camera, or software reads that as white point. Any white object less bright will be a shade of gray.

The blue cast often seen on snow is not always a white balance issue, but reflection of the sky color. Film processors would usually normalize this. With digital, we see the effect before it is processed out.

brian

[Rob Beard]

Thanks alot, this information has been a great help and thank you for taking the time to reply, Oh, that sweet little boy on the second picture is lil' 'ole me in'69, pity he turned out like fat bloke below:lol:. No its not my Spitfire.

Rob

[Rob Beard]

And this is my mum, the lady on the right,

Rob

[Dal1970]

Over expose the shot by up to 2 stops and you will get white snow.



The camera is always set to 18% grey.



Darren

[reppans]

Dal1970 wrote:

Over expose the shot by up to 2 stops and you will get white snow.



The camera is always set to 18% grey.



Darren

What he said... except I usually only overexpose snow by 1 stop. Understand that a camera's automatic expose is set to assume an average photo is 18% grey... so if it sees a pure white scene, it will make it look 18% grey - unless to override.

[henryp]