Beginner Tips for shooting subjects in snow

paul78

paul78

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Paul
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Just spent a weekend in Cairngorms mountain biking (mainly pushing through snow) .. when taking some shots of friends riding toward me with the snowy Cairngrom backdrop I end up with rider underexposed.

There isn't much time to compose or reshoot shots as its cold and everyone wants to make progress ... what settings or techniques should I be using ?
 
Meter off the palm of your hand and set the exposure manually, or if on an auto mode dial in a couple of stops exposure increase.
 
Several ways to tackle this. Basically, left to it's own devices, the camera is seeing a lot of white in the scene (the snow) and so assumes the scene is brighter than it is. It's therefore underexposing. As the guys say, you can dial in some +ve exposure compensation or meter off something else but you could also consider spot metering on your subject. I think that would be my choice in situations like this assuming you're moving around and light is changing.
 
Thanks guys .. so I guess the belt and braces is spot metering and bracketing the shot too ?
 
paul78 said:
Thanks guys .. so I guess the belt and braces is spot metering and bracketing the shot too ?
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Not sure how well bracketing will work with action shots. I think you'll be fine without once you find a technique that works for you.
 
Careful with spot metering depending what colour your friend is wearing - metering from a black coat would create another whole set of problems. (If you are photographing your friend cycling towards you getting a reading off his face before starting the sequence could be challenging as presumably he would be very small in the frame).
 
gad-westy said:
Not sure how well bracketing will work with action shots. I think you'll be fine without once you find a technique that works for you.
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Interesting ... what are the general accepted margins of tolerance for bracketing exposure ?
 
Your camera settings might allow for a choice of auto-bracketing options. You might try a stop under and a stop over in addition to one as metered. But you still have to decide an appropriate reference exposure (mid point) by paying attention to how you meter and set exposure.
 
There's some odd advice in this thread.
We are talking about action shots, shoot and adjust, bracketing or spot metering aren't viable solutions in those circumstances.

Metering under a winter sky is simple, there's not much change of intensity, use the equivalent of incident metering and fix it, whether shot manually or using exposure compensation. That leaves you free for the tricky job of getting an 'in focus' interesting shot.
 
Shoot manually and allow 1-2 stops extra on the exposure in snow. Anything more, as said above, can be dealt with later on in the warmth, especially if you always shoot RAW which gives greater dynamic range and scope for later correction.

If the first couple of shots look dreadfully wrong on the back of the camera, go for more or less on the exposure, either by adjusting the ISO or aperture, (not shutter speed if you are doing action shots).

Focus on a spot and wait for the rider to hit that spot.

Bear in mind the shots will be jpegs on the back screen even if you are recording RAW files, so may appear slightly differently to that, back on the computer screen

It is not like you are waiting for a week for the film to come back from the processing lab. You can always reshoot, digital is cheap and fast!
 
paul78 said:
Interesting ... what are the general accepted margins of tolerance for bracketing exposure ?
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As I said, I just don't think bracketing will work for action shots. It's not to do with exposure so much as the fact that you're trying to capture a particular moment. Bracketed shots will give you several different moments at different exposures but the 'correctly' exposed one won't necessarily coincide with the moment in time that you wanted to capture. If that makes sense.
 
gad-westy said:
As I said, I just don't think bracketing will work for action shots. It's not to do with exposure so much as the fact that you're trying to capture a particular moment. Bracketed shots will give you several different moments at different exposures but the 'correctly' exposed one won't necessarily coincide with the moment in time that you wanted to capture. If that makes sense.
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Yes makes perfect sense ... in the instance I was talking about that prompted this thread the riders were relatively slow moving in snow though not willing to ride the sections again to allow me to play around with varying settings.

Thanks for the input ... the photography learning curve is steep though ultimately very enjoyable :)
 
shreds said:
especially if you always shoot RAW which gives greater dynamic range
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I see and hear this a lot but is it true? If you blow the highlights out to white by giving the sensor the maximum amount of light (or more) than they can handle, that's it. There is no recovery.

It seems that it can only be true if the in camera JPG processing does not use the sensor's full range.


Steve.
 
All jpegs use a tiny fraction of the information available in the RAW file. The in camera jpeg processing is down to manufacturer presets. If you use RAW you can determine what you want to appear in the final processed shot. Obviously there will be some highlights that are blown but it is much easier to get an acceptable image from the RAW information.
 
shreds said:
All jpegs use a tiny fraction of the information available in the RAW file.
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I understand that, but if you blow out the highlights, that data does not exist in the RAW file to be recovered.

I was just wondering how much highlight detail is actually lost/discarded when an in camera JPG conversion is performed on the RAW data.


Steve.
 
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I've never made a practical experiment, but the conventional wisdom is about 1 stop is lost in translation. Think for a moment - a jpg is 8 bit, so 256 different values are possible. A raw file is 12-14 bits, which add 4000-16000 extra possible values. Assume rounding errors, and that means 2000-8000 extra values on both sides of the scale. So theory indicates that you won't blow out as quickly.
 
StephenM said:
I've never made a practical experiment, but the conventional wisdom is about 1 stop is lost in translation. Think for a moment - a jpg is 8 bit, so 256 different values are possible. A raw file is 12-14 bits, which add 4000-16000 extra possible values. Assume rounding errors, and that means 2000-8000 extra values on both sides of the scale. So theory indicates that you won't blow out as quickly.
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Yes. Shoot JPEG and the in-camera processing will cut one stop of highlights straight off the top, possibly more. It's very easy to test. In IQ terms, it's the biggest reason to shoot Raw IMHO.

To maximise dynamic range, it's important to understand your camera and processing regime, and know where the limits lie. Blinkies are the best indicator, but they will flash on areas close to the limit as well as those areas already over it, and, there's a lot of safety built in. The safety margin varies slightly according to picture styles settings in-camera, particularly the contrast level, but on my Canons I always have about 1.5 stops of highlights headroom above the point where the blinkies just start to flash.

This is vital knowledge when attempting to maximise dynamic range with expose-to-the-right (of the histogram) technique. I only use one stop of that headroom though, just to stay on the safe side.
 
Live view exposure simulation is your best and easiest help, then adjust either ISO or Aperture to get the whites nice and bright with shutter speed being your priority to stop the action. Check your histogram after a couple of shots
That's me shooting in Manual, any other mode you will use exposure compensation and for snow +2 stops seems a good starting point.
 
sorry I meant to say meter from grey card no need to + 1 stop I was a little rushed :D

Les ;)
 
Neil B said:
Live view exposure simulation is your best and easiest help, then adjust either ISO or Aperture to get the whites nice and bright with shutter speed being your priority to stop the action.
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I find live view exposure simulation very unreliable - my camera doesn't alter the brightness of the screen to compensate for the ambient light. I am then easily fooled into thinking something is brighter or darker than it really is.

Check your histogram after a couple of shots
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Definitely - just remember histograms are of limited use if parts of the scene are intentionally blown, e.g. the sun, or just bright sky.

That's me shooting in Manual, any other mode you will use exposure compensation and for snow +2 stops seems a good starting point.
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Another approach would be to spot meter off the snow in manual and then ensure that it reads +2 (going by the adage that +2.5 gets you to pure white, -4.5 gets you to pure black. Note that not all cameras are the same).

However.. unless the light was changing faster than the action I'd get my incident light meter out.
 
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