How bright should snow be?

oldoval

This may seem like an odd question but I'm finding snow to be quite difficult to shoot. Trying to view a snowfield midday with the naked eye can almost be blinding. So when trying to capture a scene that looks blown out even to the eye...does one allow the image to represent that and be blown out as well? This question could apply to lots of scenes where objects are "naturally" blown out, other than just snow.

Here's some shots I took yesterday. The snow is very bright, but these shots are fairly accurate as to how bright it was. Are these captures O.K....or should I be trying to underexpose for the snow?

BTW I used a circular polarizer on these.

craig_d

It's up to you. To my eyes, these shots look fine as they are. There actually is some detail visible in the snow, so it isn't entirely blown out; and as you say, snow can be quite brilliantly bright to the eye, so it's fair to make it look bright in your images. In the B&W images, if you underexpose to bring out more detail in the snow, you'll lose detail in the dark trees. You can adjust the tone or luminance curve to try to get the best of both worlds.

pathfinder

Capturing snow correctly can be challenging for several reason, color, tone, texture, etc.

When you reduce your image to a print, you have between 0 and 255 levels of grey to represent the blackest black and the whitest white. How you distribute those tonalities depends on what is most important to your image, as the viewer's eye usually is attracted to those areas with the most contrast, color and brightness.

As I read the snow pixels in your first image, they run about 228,228,228 to ~ 238,238,238. Definitely a light neutral tone, but not necessariy as bright as snow. I would try to raise the white point to get you snow field about 245,245, 245 or just a bit higher. It kind of depends on how high you can go and still be putting some ink on the paper, and not be completely blown out while printing.

In your second image, I measure the snow nearer 245,245,245 to 252, 252, 252. I know with my printer I can see tone differences at 252,252, 252 so I think this is just fine. Nice tones and contrast in the sky too.

I think the snow in the third image is well rendered as well. The clouds are not quite as bright, ~ 155,155,155 to 165,165,165s. I might have used a curve in the sky only to raise the white values of the clouds a bit, so they don't appear that much darker than the snow, but this is a judgement call, not a fact.

Your images suggest you are aware of the need to increase exposure to compensate when shooting in snow fields, that just blindly shooting in Auto will render your snow fields a nice medium grey tone. As that is what reflected light meters are, indeed, designed to do.

Here are a couple threads about the color of snow from a few years ago. http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=6366 and http://digitalgrin.com/showthread.php?t=85873

I think snow is the color of the light that falls on it, myself.

oldoval

craig d, pathfinder. Very good info, thank you. I hope I'm not digging up a topic that's been discussed to death.

I like to shoot in aperture priority mode and have noticed that snow tends to come out a bit gray. In processing I try to bring it back to bright white without burning the viewers retinas. I'm slowly learning just how much can be done with tone curves, etc.

I've noticed that some of my images (not necessarily just snow) have areas that are very bright or even appear blown out. But because they were shot in very bright or hard angled light actually represent what was seen.

Here are two examples. Both images were shot in light that was very "hard", but the images to my eye are representative of the scene. I wonder if the bright areas (background rock, and the tops of the deers ears) detract from the image though.

The Pentax KX is somewhat well known for clipping highlights, so this may be what I'm experiencing.

pathfinder

Shooting snow in APerture mode, will require a bit of + Exposure Compensation - usually about + 1 - 1.5 stops more exposure than your meter reads. Your meter wants the see the scene average luminosity as a mid tone grey, but as you pointed out, snow is not grey but a brilliant white. To get this, you must add positive ( more ) exposure, but using + Exposure Compensation with your camera.

It can be hard to capture hard light without blowing out some highlights somewhere, or you may have specular highlights that should be blown out - think of a sun's reflection on a bumper - how much detail is there really? None. So let some highlights get fried if necessary to save your tone range available for the rest of your image. Ultimately it comes down to what you want the viewer to see, and not see.....

These images look ok to my eye. Yes, there are some hot spots, but I suspect they looked that way in real life too. HDR will let you capture these situations sometimes, but they can end up looking kind of strange then also.

Art Scott

as Pathfinder said these images look good......when shooting nature I try to shoot in manual if there is the scene is real contrasty and I change my metering from subject to brightest area to darkest area..... all done in spot meter mode, I also will use a handheld spot meter if time allows ....I have also gotten to where i shoot a lot of bracketed scenes and just merge them together to get everything I want in the final pic.... (HDR shooting)

oldoval

Pathfinder.....I think you've answered my question pretty well. I actually had the same scenario (sun reflecting off chrome) in the back of my mind. So it is OK to sometimes have hot spots if it represents what was actually happening at the time of capture. I like images that are backlit by the sun and have hard contrast areas but this does tend to give me hotspots.

Thank you for the info....I'm trying to soak up as much knowledge as I can.

oldoval

Art Scott wrote: »

as Pathfinder said these images look good......when shooting nature I try to shoot in manual if there is the scene is real contrasty and I change my metering from subject to brightest area to darkest area..... all done in spot meter mode, I also will use a handheld spot meter if time allows ....I have also gotten to where i shoot a lot of bracketed scenes and just merge them together to get everything I want in the final pic.... (HDR shooting)

I think spot metering is one of the areas I need to experiment with more. When I'm out shooting I tend to get caught up in the scene and forget to utilize the options my camera has.