Getting the right exposure in snow

[frisby]

Hi, there,

First time post - be gentle.

I'm interested in knowing what I should do in terms of post production to get the exposure and white balance? I'm guessing play with the histogram a bit.

I'd been interested in any hints on taking photos in the snow and any feedback on the random unposed nature of the composition.

EXIF info:
0.0015s 1/640
f/7.1
ISO 100
Focal length 18mm
Type of camera: Nikon D90



Cheers,

F

[Sterling]

Conventional wisdom says that you usually need to deliberately over expose snow scenes so the snow shows up as white and not grey. Your shot definitely looks underexposed to me. Having said that, I found last winter that the D90 rendered snow pretty well using matrix metering where it takes color information into account.

Not sure why this was at ISO 100 as the D90's base ISO is 200. Using the same settings at ISO 200 would've been pretty much the right exposure.

Regarding the composition, I'm afraid having the second person's head cut off puts this shot into the "snapshot" category. It would've been quite a bit stronger without the person in the background.

[danbaileyphoto]

Nikon Matrix Metering on the DSLR's is good enough these days that you generally don't have to do much white balance adjustment, if any, to snow scenes. They also handle the exposure of snow quite well. You may find that you need to do some minor adjustments to recover highlights, especially in the clouds, and maybe adjust the blacks to make your snow images a little bit more 'rich.'

I agree, cutting the second person's head off hurts the image. I like the placement of the front person, and the climbing gear and map gives it an interesting sense of place. Just focusing on him, the gear and the environment would have made a stronger shot. Or somehow focus on the interaction between the two people, but you need to make sure that each person is in good place within the composition.

Always nice to see climbing and mountain images!

[frisby]

Thanks, guys,

That's awesome. I've only recently got an SLR and it's a big learning curve - I'm still panicking when I take shots tweaking buttons and not concentrating on the composition.

I know it's a cack photo but sometimes (if you're me) you learn more by getting feedback on the obvious faults (like the cut off head and the under exposure ) so I really appreciate this.

Fear not, those a lot more dodgy climbing images to come.

[ajsuk]

I can only agree with the previous comments on exposure and composition, however I'm also curious to see what results some HDR treatment might yield. (if you took it in raw that is).

Anyway, do keep them coming please, it's not often you see pictures from up tops of mountains. =)

[frisby]

Hi, Andy,

> Not sure why this was at ISO 100 as the D90's base ISO is 200.

Well, now that's confused me as well. The lowest ISO level is 200 but there are 2 stops down from that that don't specify an ISO number. I read online that they were effectively ISO 100 and 50(?) but maybe you could clarify how that works?

Fraser

[jdepould]

Originally Posted by frisby

Hi, Andy,

> Not sure why this was at ISO 100 as the D90's base ISO is 200.

Well, now that's confused me as well. The lowest ISO level is 200 but there are 2 stops down from that that don't specify an ISO number. I read online that they were effectively ISO 100 and 50(?) but maybe you could clarify how that works?

Fraser

That basically takes an ISO200 shot and pulls the exposure down to emulate the lower ISO, rather than actually bringing down the gain. Makes it really easy to blow highlights.

I shot a bunch of ice racing (cars + frozen lakes) about two years ago, and the matrix meter was usually close, sometimes slightly under. I'd rather have the camera expose slightly low, since I can bring the exposure up in post. If it's over, my highlights are gone forever.

I'd recommend chimping as often as is convenient, and making sure your histogram is in the right half of the graph (it is white after all), but not clipping.

[frisby]

I get you, thanks Jamie. So you're better avoiding less than ISO 200.