What’s Your Preference?

Lynn4519 · #1 (**permalink**) 01-06-2010, 11:17 PM

We are supposed to get a big snow tomorrow. I took a couple pictures of birds in the snow last week, but I was wondering what would be a good setting to start,to capture the snowfall without it looking like a bunch of white specs? I am attaching the picture. Thanks for any help.

GadgetRick · #2 (**permalink**) 01-07-2010, 01:39 AM

Great shot of the bird! I like it!

It all depends on whether it's overcast or sunny. There was just a thread around here somewhere discussing just this. There were two schools of thought...

One was to play with the exposure setting on the camera. The other was to just shoot it with a smaller aperture and a fast shutter speed. Both schools (I believe) are correct. Just depends on how you want to shoot.

Play around with both and see how it works out. The biggest thing I've found as a problem in shooting snow is the snow itself. Trying to get it so it's not blown out (the reason for mucking around with the exposure setting) as you know.

Other much more experienced photographers than me can chime in about the details. I'm just an rank beginner so I'm learning myself.

Sterling · #3 (**permalink**) 01-07-2010, 03:31 AM

Quote:

It all depends on whether it's overcast or sunny.

It's somewhat unlikely that it will be snowing while it is sunny.

So is the snow in that pic what you don't want? I thought it looked pretty good as far as the falling snow goes. Of course you could always use a tripod and try a slightly slower shutter speed to make the snow look like longer white streaks. Of course, this won't work well if your subject is a bird because the slower speed means the bird will be more blurry. You could use a faster shutter speed but that would definitely produce white dots for the falling snow but it would better freeze the motion of something moving like the bird. If you really want to emphsize the falling snow, you could try using for flash. This will brightly light up the falling snow within range but may make everything else too dark. Sounds like it's time for some experimentation.