Shooting on ice / snow

rokklymrokklym Registered Users Posts: 77 Big grins
edited November 5, 2007 in Technique
My friends and I are into ice riding and racing and since I have a nice new camera, I'd like to get some great photos. What are some techniques for shooting on ice and snow? Are neutral density filters helpful?

This is from last year with the P & S
124543909-M.jpg

124535971-M.jpg
www.lonewolfstudios.us
Olympus E3 w HLD4, E520, E510 11-22mm, 50-200mm,35mm macro, 14-42mm, 40-150, FL50R & FL36R
http://rokklym.smugmug.com/
We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life,to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment no matter what.
- George Santayana, "The philosophy of travel"

Comments

  • SloYerRollSloYerRoll Registered Users Posts: 2,788 Major grins
    edited November 1, 2007
    I'm not going to steal Pathfinders thunder on the sunny 16 which you should live by when shooting in conditions like this.
    My piece of advise would be:
    once you get your camera's settings dialed in. Leave it on full manual for the rest of the day. Don't trust your camera to give you the right exposure settings with this much bright white all around. This is what happened w/ your P&S. It metered off of the snow and underexposed your subjects. Who cares if a bit of your snow gets blown out in the shot. It's white anyway! What matters is you get the focal point exposed properly.

    BTW that looks like allot of fun!
  • DogdotsDogdots Registered Users Posts: 8,795 Major grins
    edited November 1, 2007
    SloYerRoll wrote:
    I'm not going to steal Pathfinders thunder on the sunny 16 which you should live by when shooting in conditions like this.
    My piece of advise would be:
    once you get your camera's settings dialed in. Leave it on full manual for the rest of the day. Don't trust your camera to give you the right exposure settings with this much bright white all around. This is what happened w/ your P&S. It metered off of the snow and underexposed your subjects. Who cares if a bit of your snow gets blown out in the shot. It's white anyway! What matters is you get the focal point exposed properly.

    BTW that looks like allot of fun!

    I'm glad to read this as that cold white stuff will be here soon and I was wondering how I was going to deal with it.
    Mary
    Mary
    www.Dogdotsphotography.com
  • pathfinderpathfinder Super Moderators Posts: 14,708 moderator
    edited November 1, 2007
    Rokklym,

    Welcome to dgrin.

    The topic of shooting in snowfields seems to come up every year about this time.

    The short answer is that reflective light meters, like the one in your camera, are designed to ASSUME that the scene in front of your camera is an AVERAGE Brightness - the so called 16% neutral gray, so it will eunderxpose the snow to photograph as a mid tone gray. But snow is white usually, and you need to increase your exposure by about 1-2 fstops of light or +1 to +2 Exposure Compensation to force your camera to "overexpose" the snow and capture it as a bright white.

    As Jon said, the easy way is to shoot your camera in manual mode where you set the shutter speed and aperture. There is a rule from 60 years ago ( before automatic cameras) when folks shot Kodachrome without light meters and exposed it correctly by following the Sunny 16 rule

    I wrote a thread about the Sunny 16 rule here - http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=30235&highlight=sunny+pathfinder


    If your camera will let you shoot in manual mode, set the ISO to 100, set the aperture to f16 and the shutter speed to 1/ISO or 1/100th for ISO 100 on your camera - this is for bright sunlight. (Most P&Ss do not have f16, but they usually have f8 so for f8 you would need a shutter speed of 1/400th to have the same exposure as f16 at 1/100th)

    Learn to use the sunny 16 rule, and see if it doesn't help you with shooting in snow.thumb.gif

    Neutral NDs can help you capture the sky with a darker forgeround, but won't be much help shooting racing motorcycles on the ice;

    I see from your profile that you are from Wisconsin. From your avatar, I thought you might be Swedish or Scandinavianne_nau.gif
    Pathfinder - www.pathfinder.smugmug.com

    Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
  • SloYerRollSloYerRoll Registered Users Posts: 2,788 Major grins
    edited November 1, 2007
    pathfinder wrote:
    Learn to use the sunny 16 rule, and see if it doesn't help you with shooting in snow.thumb.gif
    I can vouch for the sunny 16 rule. I memorized the table about a year ago and it's already saved my shots a few times! I don't sya you need to memorize it. But DEFINATELY print it, laminate and put in your camera bag.

    As a matter of fact, I'm going to shoot some ROTC kids tomorrow since one of my wife's photographers is sick. So I'll have my camera exposure within one stop before I even break out the lightmeter.. (it's a medium format film camera)
  • rokklymrokklym Registered Users Posts: 77 Big grins
    edited November 1, 2007
    pathfinder wrote:
    Rokklym,

    Welcome to dgrin.

    The topic of shooting in snowfields seems to come up every year about this time.

    The short answer is that reflective light meters, like the one in your camera, are designed to ASSUME that the scene in front of your camera is an AVERAGE Brightness - the so called 16% neutral gray, so it will eunderxpose the snow to photograph as a mid tone gray. But snow is white usually, and you need to increase your exposure by about 1-2 fstops of light or +1 to +2 Exposure Compensation to force your camera to "overexpose" the snow and capture it as a bright white.

    As Jon said, the easy way is to shoot your camera in manual mode where you set the shutter speed and aperture. There is a rule from 60 years ago ( before automatic cameras) when folks shot Kodachrome without light meters and exposed it correctly by following the Sunny 16 rule

    I wrote a thread about the Sunny 16 rule here - http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=30235&highlight=sunny+pathfinder


    If your camera will let you shoot in manual mode, set the ISO to 100, set the aperture to f16 and the shutter speed to 1/ISO or 1/100th for ISO 100 on your camera - this is for bright sunlight. (Most P&Ss do not have f16, but they usually have f8 so for f8 you would need a shutter speed of 1/400th to have the same exposure as f16 at 1/100th)

    Learn to use the sunny 16 rule, and see if it doesn't help you with shooting in snow.thumb.gif

    Neutral NDs can help you capture the sky with a darker forgeround, but won't be much help shooting racing motorcycles on the ice;

    I see from your profile that you are from Wisconsin. From your avatar, I thought you might be Swedish or Scandinavianne_nau.gif

    Thanks to all of you for the hints, I'm in no hurry to be able to shoot on ice, but when that time comes, I want to have a good idea of where to start. I'd love to shoot when I'm not riding, and not spend all my time taking bad shots. I'll be shooting with my Olympus E-510.

    yeah, I'm 100% Norwegian thumb.gif
    www.lonewolfstudios.us
    Olympus E3 w HLD4, E520, E510 11-22mm, 50-200mm,35mm macro, 14-42mm, 40-150, FL50R & FL36R
    http://rokklym.smugmug.com/
    We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life,to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment no matter what.
    - George Santayana, "The philosophy of travel"
  • rokklymrokklym Registered Users Posts: 77 Big grins
    edited November 1, 2007
    SloYerRoll wrote:

    BTW that looks like allot of fun!

    Its a ton of fun! Its almost giggle in your helmet kinda fun and really helps with the winter blues. Unfortunately, the winters around here haven't been great for ice or snow for that matter.

    There are a couple photographers that come out and shoot and this guy
    http://dansalton.smugmug.com/ got a few good pics of me.

    Here is one
    128824343-M-1.jpg
    www.lonewolfstudios.us
    Olympus E3 w HLD4, E520, E510 11-22mm, 50-200mm,35mm macro, 14-42mm, 40-150, FL50R & FL36R
    http://rokklym.smugmug.com/
    We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life,to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment no matter what.
    - George Santayana, "The philosophy of travel"
  • DJTDJT Registered Users Posts: 353 Major grins
    edited November 5, 2007
    Dogdots wrote:
    I'm glad to read this as that cold white stuff will be here soon and I was wondering how I was going to deal with it.
    Mary

    Careful what you wish for, it's suppose to snow in NE Indiana this week then be in the 50's this coming weekend... rolleyes1.gif

    Nice photo.... tho I see myself falling on a bike like that with snow and ice.
    David

    Photos | Blog | Youtube
  • DogdotsDogdots Registered Users Posts: 8,795 Major grins
    edited November 5, 2007
    DJT wrote:
    Careful what you wish for, it's suppose to snow in NE Indiana this week then be in the 50's this coming weekend... rolleyes1.gif

    Nice photo.... tho I see myself falling on a bike like that with snow and ice.

    I saw my first snow/sleet flurry today. Lasted about 3 min. I was getting excited----then remembered I will be looking at this stuff for the next 4 months :D .

    Hopefully I will be able to get some good clear pictures like this.

    DJT how is the arm doing?
    Mary
    Mary
    www.Dogdotsphotography.com
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