What is best way to photogragh snow?
By sunilkonda
@sunilkonda (1215)
India
October 1, 2008 6:23am CST
Most of the time I loved to capture beautiful pictures in my camera.On my last vaccation i went to Shimla during snowfall time.What a beautiful weather and picture but my camera was unable to capture.Snow tends to fool the camera sometimes may be that's why.What must be the other reasons and is there are any filters that will make it look better.
1 response
@Davidarich (985)
• Australia
2 Oct 08
Filters are not the answer for snow, sunilkonda. All that white fools the exposure meter and it tries to bring it back towards 18% gray. What you have to do is increase the exposure by about 1 or maybe 2 stops (1 stop means double the exposure, 2 stops means 4x what the camera tries to set).
How you do that depends on your camera. If you have "exposure compensation" you just set it +1 or +2. If you have manual exposure control, open the aperture 1 or 2 stops more than the recommended value (use a smaller f number: larger numbers like f22 let in LESS light and smaller numers like f3.5 let in MORE). You get a similar result by using a slower shutter speed if that's more convenient.
Filters won't help, because they affects both the shutter speed and aperture equally, thus keeping the same effective exposure.
For the pictures you already took, open them in an editing package (scan them in if you use print film or slides), open the Adjustments/Color Menu, and use the eyedropper tool to set a snow area as the white point.
Hope you enjoyed the holiday anyway.
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