Shooting in the snow

[patrick_mont]

<p>Hi Guys-<br>

<br />With the blizzard about to hit the Northeast US, I have a question. I thought I had read at some point that it is recommended to make adjustments to meter reading when trying to shoot in the snow because the meter sees the scene as brighter. I have some Fujichrome in the camera, so I want to make sure that I can do the best I can with exposure. Should I take a stop off the exposure because of the snow? For all of us here about to get the snow, good luck!<br>

Thanks!</p>

<p>Pat</p>

[patrick_mont]

<p>Ah, Thanks. I'll pull out the grey card that I have that I haven't used enough yet!</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>If you want white snow with detail, meter off the snow and open up 1.3 to 2 stops over the meter reading. Depends on overall scene contrast, lighting, film and where you want the critical detail.</p>

[paul_wheatland]

<ol>

<li>With chrome E-6 you may underexpose a bit, with print over expose 1 to 2 stops</li>

</ol>

[cbender]

<p>If carrying a grey card around with you is too much of a hassle, you can bootstrap a measurement of your hand reflectivity to that of the grey card. Measure the grey card with your meter. Then measure your hand as if it were a grey card. Then commit that offset to memory (or better yet set the expsure compensation on your camera).</p>

<p>Granted, you'll have to take off your gloves to use this technique in the snow. But at least your hand won't dissolve in the wet; a grey card will.</p>

[Dustin McAmera]

<p>Hey - I'm going to make my millions selling 18% grey gloves!<br>

<br />I always have my hand-held meter with me, even when I'm using a camera with a TTL meter (quite rarely these days - I've retreated to the 1950s!), and measure incident light. A grey card reading should give you much the same result.</p>

[lachaine]

<p>It depends on how much white there is in the scene, and how white you want the snow itself to appear. If you use any kind of matrix or evaluative meter, it depends on how your particular camera model deals with snow. Generally-speaking, if you use centre-weighted or averaging type meter, meter on snow and open up as someone else already suggested. However, if you have urban type scenes with not just snow in them but other darker things, it may well average out just with normal metering.</p>

[James G. Dainis]

It amazes me how one can buy a cardboard disposable camera which has no metering, no shutter speed or aperture adjustment and get photos that look properly exposed. While one person with an expensive camera is fiddling with metering and gray cards or incident meters or spot meters and opening up two stops or gray mittens or bare hands and opening up so many stops, the person next to him with a $10 disposable camera is getting good photo after good photo while dong nothing but aiming and pressing the shutter button.

 

I'm surprised no one had mentioned the "Sunny 16" rule. With snow, the meter is your enemy. Go manual. Out in the sun using 400 ISO, set the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed to 1/400 sec. then take photos to your heart's content. Or, at least keep the "Sunny 16" rule in mind when making metering adjustments.

[patrick_mont]

<p>James- I agree with you totally! That and the fixed shutter speed/aperture cheap old 127 cameras that my grandparents used to shoot Ektachrome with...and that worked too!</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>The Sunny 16 rules works better with negative film because it has greater latitude when printing. But since he's shooting chromes, metering becomes more critical. Also, the Sunny 16 rule works during the day between 10am and 2pm. As you get closer to sunrise or sunset, the rule won't work as well.<br>

The other option is to use an incident meter to read the ambient light directly. Then, you don't care what the subject is - light like snow or dark like shade. </p>

 

[jason_withers]

<p><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7458/11864031535_8957172968_n.jpg" alt="" width="320" height="246" />Some of the older camera manufacturers (Kodak in particular) had a fix for that by providing a little white plastic piece that attached to the incident light meter. Pretty nifty!</p>

<p> </p>

[James G. Dainis]

There used to be a white filter that one could attach to the lens to turn the camera's reflective meter into an incident meter. I think a white styrofoam cup placed over the lens may do the same thing.

[plasma181]

<p>You can also meter a patch of blue sky. </p>