Any tips on how to shoot snow?

disanski

Hey guys a little off-topic question here : Do you have any tips on how to take nice snow shots? I am planing to go out tomorrow morning and try to take few shots. We are just getting a little over a foot of snow as we speak I dont believe that it is going to be sunny morning but any way. I have Olympus 510E.
Thanks everybody

Rick Stirling

The light meter on your camera can become confused, so although the world is very bright your shots come out UNDEREXPOSED. You'll possibly need to override this so that you manually over expose your shots.

e-freak

test shots for correct MANUAL settings. if possible you can also do two different exposures per shot or - better - take a polar filter with you. these help alot.

if it's sunny better take a uv-filter with you for not getting snowblind or destroying your chip.

disanski

Thanks RIck.
I will keep that in mind tomorrow. This could be achieved either with making the shutter speed a bit lower or making the aperture larger, correct? Also I have RAW format on that camera and I have never used it yet so I was going to try that and I heard that if using it the exposure could be adjusted afterwords. I am just not sure should I even bother to try to understand how that works since I am not that comfortable even with the JPG yet or master them first and worry about the Raw later. Also if I do use the raw do I proceed the same way I would if it was JPG and just modify it after that?
What else do I need to know
I saw your flicker gallery and I love this "Palestro N1 colour" the lighting is great:)
Thanks again.

disanski

Thanks e- freak.
How do I test shoot? Sorry I don't know much about it .I was also thinking what would be a good starting point so I can adjust it from there on. I have uv filter and I have this one on all the time but I don't have polar filter. Where I am located now could be difficult to get one.
Thanks guys

Rick Stirling

Ta!

Both of those are correct - a larger aperture will let more light in (but will give you a shallower depth of field), and a longer exposure will let more light in.

Best advice was from e-freak - take some test shots. Shoot at one shutter speed and look at the results. Do you like it? Is it too bright? Too dark?Don't like the depth of field? Experiment with all those settings. You don't need to wait, you can do all of that in your own home. Take dozens of shots and look at each one after you take it and compare it to the previous one.

disanski

Great. Thanks again. I hope so much it is a sunny morning

ScoobyDoofus

Or...Bring a tripod, and bracket your exposures from what the lightmeter reads +/- 1 or 2 stops and then HDR that stuff. (translation: Take a few shots of each scene at multiple exposures (too bright, too dark, just right, etc) and combine them in photoshop using the "merge to hdr" function.

disanski

Great taking the tripod with me I was going to any way. I did not even know that existed great help thanks guys. (thanks for the translation as well) I will see if I can dig up something else about this HDR merging so I am more prepared.

disanski

Thanks for the help once again. It is working .. I think
So i started early in the morning and it was sunny but somehow for the first 1 hour I did not notice I was taking the shots with 1600 ISO silly me. any way later on i fixed this and moved it back down to 100-200 since it was sunny and played with the shutter speed and the aperture.
I also tried merging them in to a HDR and it does give great results. What do you think



Also I wanted to ask something else. I know there is like a big no no to shoot against the sun, but there is a steam coming out of the water early when the sun starts shining, but it is only visible or it is more visible when you are looking against the sun. How would you approach this?