Snow photo advice please

Ian Kilby

Ian Kilby

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Hi folks,

Newbie here. How do I avoid the blue tinge on my snow-scape shots? It was quite overcast this morning, struggling for light, but even so I was disappointed that all my shots came out slightly off colour.

All advice gratefully received.

Thanks
 
artyman said:
Adjust your white balance, check your manual on how to do a custom one.
Click to expand...

:agree: and also if you shoot raw its an easy adjustment in ACR, what camera do you have?, do you shoot raw?, what software have you got?

And Hi Ian :wave:

Welcome to TP :thumbs:

Look forward to seeing some of your work :thumbs:
 
Thank you.

Might be a silly question - what do I change it to? There are pre-sets (cloudy etc) but will I need to work out how to create a custom WB? Or do I just need to use a different pre-set?
 
Just Dave said:
:agree: and also if you shoot raw its an easy adjustment in ACR, what camera do you have?, do you shoot raw?, what software have you got?

And Hi Ian :wave:

Welcome to TP :thumbs:

Look forward to seeing some of your work :thumbs:
Click to expand...

Thank you, i have some way to go before i can match any of the shots on here!! I have a canon 400d and do shoot raw but I'm also learning pp too. I have photoshop.
 
As well as the WB settings, you may need to dial in some extra exposure (maybe 1 stop to the right) if the scene is predominantly snow as the camera meter for 15-18% grey.
 
stupar said:
As well as the WB settings, you may need to dial in some extra exposure (maybe 1 stop to the right) if the scene is predominantly snow as the camera meter for 15-18% grey.
Click to expand...

Great, thank you. I will read up on custom WB and play around with exposure too. Hopefully we will see a bit more snow this year otherwise it will be a long time to wait before I can give it a go
 
stupar said:
As well as the WB settings, you may need to dial in some extra exposure (maybe 1 stop to the right) if the scene is predominantly snow as the camera meter for 15-18% grey.
Click to expand...

As above, add 2 stops - shooting raw is the best option so you can change WB later if you have a problem.

Another option is to use custom white balance and meter off the back of your hand - usually works if there's nothing grey to meter off


Simon
 
I was out taking snow photo's this weekend. I took all shots in RAW and a lot of them I did EV bracketing by by 0.7 for a series of 3 photos. Camera was set of AWB and then I just made the right adjustments in PE6 so that the snow looked white as the AWB on my a200 had a hard time getting it right
 
gnirtS said:
Over expose 1/3 to 2/3 stop depending how bright the scene is then either shoot a manual white balance or just warm it up in camera RAW after the event. I'd do the latter.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Still figuring out how best to set up custom WB but I did have a go at overexposing and then tweaking afterwards - seems to have made a LOT of difference to the final pic.

Thanks for all of your suggestions
 
Ian Kilby said:
Thank you, i have some way to go before i can match any of the shots on here!! I have a canon 400d and do shoot raw but I'm also learning pp too. I have photoshop.
Click to expand...

Shoot raw, and then in post-processing use the white balance eyedropper tool to sample an area of snow in shadow. That should get you most of the way towards a correct white balance for the snow.

The trick with adjusting white balance is knowing where to find a neutral grey in the landscape. For white balance it doesn't need to be an 18% mid-grey, just a neutral one - that is one that should be neutral once corrected.
 
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