Photographing glaciers/lakes

[lionofjudah]

hi guys,
I am taking a trip soon to Patagonia and was wondering if you had any tips on photographing glaciers on the lakes. I know about the metering and to increase 1-1.5 stops to prevent underexposure.
My main question was how is white balance affected by this? I know some of you will say yes but this can be adjusted in photoshop later but I am wondering how an unadjusted photo would look? Also would this "non-white balanced" photo look more underexposed?
Finally as these photos will include different colours/brightnesses is it better to take HDR shots?
many thanks for your help

 

[DavidW]

Hi. The white balance won't affect your exposure. Your photos won't vary much in white balance and should have equal brightness.
I'm a canon shooter, but you can set your camera to view your photo previews with a RGB graph by the side, you can easily see if one or more colours are being overexposed. This is more important than the white balance variation. Shoot in raw mode to allow you to recover any overexposed shots, jpegs aren't forgiving.
I would highly recommend taking a circular polarising filter to control the brightness of the skies and glaciers.

 

[markmullen]

Whilst I agree with David's view that you should shoot in raw I wouldn't recommend overexposing and relying on pulling it back in post processing, whilst in raw you've got more latitude to recover some overexposure than a jpeg it isn't by a huge amount, when an area is truly blown there is nothing you can do to bring it back, the information simply isn't recorded.

Similarly whilst a CPL is a good idea it won't control brightness, for that you'll either need ND grads or some form of exposure blending whether it be you combining two frames, or HDR. I favour grads as I like to get as much done in camera whilst I'm on location.

Regarding white balance, with something artistic like landscapes, true recording of the white balance isn't as necessary as in some forms of photography like commercial where the product has to look as it does in real life. To this extent you can play with the white balance to achieve the final result, eg you might warm up a sunset by adjusting the white balance, or cool down a snow scene to give a feeling of coldness.

My recommendation would be to keep an eye on the histogram, learn to read it if you don't already, as it will give you a much better idea of whats going on than the LCD preview. Don't forget that in a snowy scene your histogram should show a bunch towards the right of the histogram.

 

[big soft moose]

I also think that you should adjust white balance in your camera very carefully and it should be at equal level with brightness. .

Erm - what ? :shrug:

WB is to do to with colour temperature - its got nothing to do with brightness

 

[boyfalldown]

Erm - what ? :shrug:

WB is to do to with colour temperature - its got nothing to do with brightness

errrrmmmm - WB settings do have an effect on exposure and the histogram. ETA - google Uni white balance or just try it. Take a RAW file, try setting the WB as shot, -2k and +2k and see what the histogram does.

 

[big soft moose]

well yes they do - but would you seriously advise someone that they should " adjust the white balance in camera very carefully and it should be at the equal level to brightness" as per the post I was taking about ? (which appears to have now been deleted by the powers that be)

Most of us would set the WB to the appropriate weather condition then expose for the conditions at hand.