correct metering?

[ggoldthorpe]

Canon 50D
EF 28mm lens
Ap: 1/250
Shutter: 8
Metering: Centre-Weighted Average
ISO: 100

Is the snow too grey? I may not have had the best metering on this but I really like the way the sky has turned out - but have i paid too high a price on the snow?

All comments welcome.

G

[hifigraz]

The composition is great. I love the hiking trail.
The tree is nice. The sky is ok but a little bit to much of smoke I think.
I would try to adjust white balance to meet a white snow, and a little bit more natural sky.
Ofcourse only if you have a raw picture
Anyway, this is a really nice shot and I like it. (Only my five cents)

TFS Robert

[zona5101]

I believe your snow is too grey but if you like that dark moody sky you can use a gradient or a mask when you increase the exposure for the snow...

[Aleix]

Hello,

About the snow: a bit too gray. Luckily you can change this easily. The suggestion below required only use of DODGE tool in PS (Range: Midtones, Exposure: 100%), painting the snow area with it. You could try different exposures of that tool to make it more or less gray, or apply it multiple times as well.


Left: applied once
Right: applied twice

Not the only approach to it, though. But an option.

Greetings

[ggoldthorpe]

Thanks all - this bolsters my belief that I really need to get PS for processing - at the moment I just have the software that came with the camera - no masking available.

Thanks Alex for having a go at the processing yourself; I like the first example but feel he second has gone too far - the snow looks blown-out to me.

Great to know there is hope yet ;-)

[LeeR]

I started with black and white film so burning and dodging are like old friends. I learned many years ago that you can do some minor miracles with the two. I did do a bit of masking here, but mostly I did a lot of b&d. You may not like my choices, but you should be able to see what is possible with time and attention.

[ggoldthorpe]

Hello again Lee (we last met on the dog eating donkey shot ;-) I really like what you have done here - thanks. Just the right balance between the mottled sky and the white snow. As i said, I really need to get my hands on some decent PS software.
I deal mostly in colour (wildlife) but I'm really getting quite enamored with B&W and would like to find out more about the various techniques - any ideas?

[LeeR]

I highly reccomend getting GIMP. it is free software that has many of the features of Photoshop. Online there are several tools that are fairly good as well. Photoshop Express allows you to do some image editing as well as file sharing up to 2GB at no charge. Aviary is another online tool very similar to PS and they also have 74 tutorials to show you the basics of using the program. Speaking of tutorials, anyone who has PS will tell you that one of the most challenging things about it is that there are so many techniques to master. I think I know the program pretty well but people are always showing me how to do things better and faster. YouTube has thousands of PS tutorials to help. It really is a whole new world once you have some new software and with free options out there you really have no excuse.

[ggoldthorpe]

excellent - thanks. I've been toying with the idea of getting Gimp but was putting it off in the hope that PS would somehow miraculously appear on my laptop - time to stop dreaming and start doing I guess. Thanks again.

[photopriority]

the picture is better with the white snow, composition is good i think