Quick Tip – Taking Pictures In The Snow
November 27, 2009
Have you ever taken a picture on the ski slopes or in the snoy mountains only to see the brilliant white look like a dull gray in your photographs? You can avoid that by setting your camera to overexpose your image by one f-stop. Sound weird to let even more light into your image with all that reflective snow? Well, your camera sets its exposure based on 18% gray. It looks for the predominant shade in the frame and establishes that as the point of 18% gray.That means the camera wants your snow to show up as a murky midtone So by overexposing by one stop your telling the camera to let more light in giving your snow scene the nice, crisp white your eyes are seeing.
If you can’t tell your camera to overexpose, try this. Hold the palm of your hand about a foot in front of your lens. Press the shutter button half way until the camera gets all its settings figured out. Then, with the shutter button still pressed half way, remove your hand from in front of the lens, compose your image, then depress the shutter button all the way to capture your image.
By the way, this applies to any subject that is very bright such as sand on a beach. You can also fix your exposure in Photoshop or just about any other editing software but, as always, it’s best to get it right in the camera!
I found a good tutorail if you want some in depth information on this subject. Visit http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/snow.htm.
That’s all for today, enjoy the leftovers!
