I am having a tough time getting useful exposures in snow. Seeking advice, tips, book recommendations, video recommendations.
The general rule of thumb - which almost always works well - is to meter on the snow & then open up 2 stops. That places the snow on Zone 8 (see Ansel Adams Zone System).
Good luck
Ignore the meter in your camera. It is reflecting light from the brilliant white snow. It is hard to explain, but cameras try to assume you are metering an average gray.
You could get a photographic gray card, point your camera at it and lock the exposure. Those are cheap, but you can try the palm of your hand as it is close.
You could get a "incidence" light meter. It measure the light falling on the subject, not the reflectance of the subjet.
You could switch your camera to spot metering, point it at something besides the snow and lock the exposure.
You should get more suggestions!
CPR
Loc: Nature Coast of Florida
Use "spot metering" and decide if you want the details in the white snow or the person/object and then point the spot at which you want. The camera meter will do the rest...
You can also use fill flash effectively. Expose for the bright snow and use fill flash to light the subject.....
It could be that your light meter sees all that white snow as 18% gray so your exposures are probably two stops off or more.
thanks. Nice horse by the way. Quarter horse? My wife and I have 7 horses.
CPR
Loc: Nature Coast of Florida
He was a quarter horse (cutting horse) and wide as a truck. At the time we had 9 of our own and 30 boarders. In the past though now. Last lesson horse passed away at 29 just last year.
I've never had a problem with exposure and snow for some reason as I don't compensate for it. One tip I'll pass on is that shooting while heavy snow is falling, requires manual focus as auto focus will focus on big snow flakes.
Simple fix. Set the exposure value to +1 or +2. All cameras have software that tries to make bright white into dirty grey. This correction will make bright white snow. David PS Taking Christmas lights at night is just the opposite. The camera thinks you are taking the dark area and it makes things brighter and the lights will be burnt bright white with no color.
mstuhr wrote:
I am having a tough time getting useful exposures in snow. Seeking advice, tips, book recommendations, video recommendations.
Go out and turn towards the sun and take a reading of the blue sky above the sun (without getting any of the sun in the frame) and lock that reading. Now take your snow image and it should be perfectly exposed.
We also have a boarding stable. 20 horses plus ours. The stable almost pays for our horse habit. That's about as good as it gets.
Sorry your last one passed on. Two of ours are over 25 and mostly retired.
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