Winter (digital) photography

I am a beginner and having troubles shooting good photograps in the

winter. My images loses the deteails doe the dark parts or overexposed

when the settings are adjusted. Since I have a really basic,

point-and-shoot camera I was not able to use manual settings. But I

plan to borrow a better camera for the weekend. What are the

recommendations to take the best possbile pictures? Are any filters

needed? I found some tips on a Kodak site but only for film cameras.

Any help welcome :)

It sounds like your issue is a camera's tendency to mis-expose when presented with very bright subjects, such as snow. If you do a search in the photo.net archives for "snow exposure" you'll probably find a fair amount of help. Good luck.

Thank ypu for your help. I did search for "winter photography" bout found almost nothing :(

Besides this site, do a Google search on snow photography, etc. Most auto-exposure cameras are designed to read a mixed color type subject that approximates an 18% gray color. Snow is essentially all white so in trying to fix that, the exposure often is "off." You will likely need approx. a +1.5 exposure compensation and bracketing can be really helpful.

 

You may well run into subjects that combine dark items and white snow and there may be too much contrast to capture both successfully.

If you are using a camera with a histogram adjust your exposure so that you are not cutting off either end. You may favor a slight underexposure since you should be able to bring out detail with photoshop or a image adjusting program. If you overexpose the detail is not captured and cannot be recovered. You may want to use a warming filter but it is not necessary with digital photos since white balance can be adjusted during raw conversion (shoot raw).

No not you, the file capture mode :)