Roxanne says: Overexpose that Snow!

Andy

I talk about this alot, but shooting my dog yesterday, in the fresh snow, made me think about posting this again.

Your camera's meter will be fooled by the snow, thinking it's all one big 18% grey card.

here is the shot with the camera deciding what to do:


So, the solution is to set your camera's exposure compensation to +1, +1.3, or +1.6 and make up for that :evil

here is the shot with me deciding what to do (+1.66 ev):


So everyone, remember, overexpose that snow :thumb

Harryb

Good tip Andy but what's snow? :cavig

pathfinder

Gorgeous dog, Andy. Excellent demonstration of the evils that befall those who depend entirely on reflected light meters too.:D

Do you have the exif data for these two images? I could not read them from the online files. I want to compare them to Sunny 16 predictions.

Andy

pathfinder wrote:

Gorgeous dog, Andy. Excellent demonstration of the evils that befall those who depend entirely on reflected light meters too.:D

Do you have the exif data for these two images? I could not read them from the online files. I want to compare them to Sunny 16 predictions.

EXIF:

1/3200th sec, f/2.8 0EV
1/1250th sec, f/2.8, + 1.33 EV

both at ISO 100

DavidTO

What happens if Roxanne puts out the red light? How does that affect exposure?

pathfinder

Andy wrote:

EXIF:

1/3200th sec, f/2.8 0EV
1/1250th sec, f/2.8, + 1.33 EV

both at ISO 100

1/3200th f2.8 ISO 100 is correct for sunlight subjects.

Was it moderately overcast when these where shot perhaps?

Andy

pathfinder wrote:

1/3200th f2.8 ISO 100 is correct for sunlight subjects.

Was it moderately overcast when these where shot perhaps?

High bright overcast.

pathfinder

Sunny 16 would yield 1/1600th f2.8 ISO 100, ( + 1 stop for shadows with soft edges or cloudy bright ) eg: 1 stop more than in bright sunlight.

Pretty close to your 1/1250th isn't it?

saurora

Harryb wrote:

Good tip Andy but what's snow? :cavig

Harry, think sand only brighter!!!

Glenn NK

Harryb wrote:

Good tip Andy but what's snow? :cavig

The white decorative stuff that blows off trees in hurricanes.

doug pettway

i've found that maintaining the balance between proper whites and retaining details to be rather difficult. any tips on doing that? burning and dodging? exposure bracketing? what works for you?

Icebear

Harryb wrote:

Good tip Andy but what's snow? :cavig

You poor, deprived soul :cry

LiquidAir

doug pettway wrote:

i've found that maintaining the balance between proper whites and retaining details to be rather difficult. any tips on doing that? burning and dodging? exposure bracketing? what works for you?

Curves in your RAW processor. The simplest answer is to adjust the exposure is to push the to put the highlights at the top of the histogram (as Andy says) and then push down the gamma/brightness (but not the exposure) in post. You can use more exotic cuves, but the brightness control (in ACR/Lighroom) often does the trick quite nicely.

The typical curves used to produce JPEGs in camera tend to compress the highlights and squeeze out the detail. The standard curves are usually designed to bump midrange contrast at the expense of highlight and shadow detail, but in a scene that is predominatly white, that curve is working against you. While you can to more exotic things, pushing down the brightness is a quick and easy way of biasing that contrast bump toward the highlight end of the histogram.

pathfinder

You tend to need a curve that looks like this for snow - the highlight quarter tones of the curve are steepened. This means flattening the curve in the lower three quarter of the image. This was done in Photoshop, but can also be done in ARC now.

Sometimes you can do a small s curve in the upper quarter, but you will risk posterization unless you are careful with these moves.

doug pettway

wow! very detailed responses. thank you so much. i will go back to some of my bad snow photos and give these a try.