how to take good pics in snow.

I was trying to take pics on various settings on my canon 400d with 28-135mm lens
some came out ok but still with that bluish cast.and the snow was affecting the light in the eyes some were v dark.
can I have some tips from you guys what should I be setting my camera at? Id have liked to have seen peppers eyes. her face is too dark.

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/m...s/IMG_6410.jpg
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/m...s/IMG_6254.jpg
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/m...s/IMG_6299.jpg

Jean,
Snow is one of the things that causes problems with cameras metering, in fact scenes that are predominately very white of very black will cause problems.

Picture No. 2, Snowy landscape, the camera has underexposed this because of the essentially white scene, for scenes like this either set exposure compensation to "+1" or meter manually, overexpose by 1 to 2 stops.
The slight blue colour cast to me is not a problem as it emphasises the cold.
Photo's taken early morning, late afternoon in the snow will be "Warmer" than those taken at midday.

Pictures No. 1 and 3, the exposure here is not far off, the problem is that the range of bright too dark, fill-in flash on No.1 might have worked, although I think this is a good animal portrait, and would have lightened the dog's face in post processing with photoshop or similar. Photograph No. 3, the snow looks pretty good, the dog's face is underexposed, I'm not sure fill-in flash would have worked here, but I'm no expert with flash, I would have tried to do something with post processing.

Hope this helps, sorry its a bit long winded.

NL

Quote:

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Originally Posted by North Light

Jean,
Snow is one of the things that causes problems with cameras metering, in fact scenes that are predominately very white of very black will cause problems.

Picture No. 2, Snowy landscape, the camera has underexposed this because of the essentially white scene, for scenes like this either set exposure compensation to "+1" or meter manually, overexpose by 1 to 2 stops.
The slight blue colour cast to me is not a problem as it emphasises the cold.
Photo's taken early morning, late afternoon in the snow will be "Warmer" than those taken at midday.

Pictures No. 1 and 3, the exposure here is not far off, the problem is that the range of bright too dark, fill-in flash on No.1 might have worked, although I think this is a good animal portrait, and would have lightened the dog's face in post processing with photoshop or similar. Photograph No. 3, the snow looks pretty good, the dog's face is underexposed, I'm not sure fill-in flash would have worked here, but I'm no expert with flash, I would have tried to do something with post processing.

Hope this helps, sorry its a bit long winded.

NL

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thanks im going to print this off and go and look at my camera book.
I set my AF point to center so that it wouldnt be focussing on the snow but Im guessing that doesnt apply to the light metering. should I change that from evaluative to partial or center weighted? remember Im a beginner.. when I set the exposure, is a stop each small mark or the whole number eg 1, 2
Is there a particular aperture which is better for snowy pics.? I was changing it like crazy, I had the iso at 200 I set the camera to one shot except the running shot think it was AI focus or servo
thanks again. all these numbers make me dizzy.;)

Jean,
Setting AF point to centre may well bias the exposure to take more account of the centre of the image, in the case of the two dog photos this would be helpful. The real problem is on the two dog photos is related to contrast, and I think your camera has done a pretty good job.

If your camera is set to one of the auto modes, different apertures change how much of the scene will be in focus, for the portraits of dogs f4.0 to f8.0 would do quite well, important to keep the shutter speed up if the dogs are moving.
For landscape I would typically be using an aperture in the range f8.0 to f 13.

If after you have read the instruction manual you have any more questions ask on the forum.

Have fun,

NL

Quote:

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Originally Posted by North Light

Jean,
Setting AF point to centre may well bias the exposure to take more account of the centre of the image, in the case of the two dog photos this would be helpful. The real problem is on the two dog photos is related to contrast, and I think your camera has done a pretty good job.

If your camera is set to one of the auto modes, different apertures change how much of the scene will be in focus, for the portraits of dogs f4.0 to f8.0 would do quite well, important to keep the shutter speed up if the dogs are moving.
For landscape I would typically be using an aperture in the range f8.0 to f 13.

If after you have read the instruction manual you have any more questions ask on the forum.

Have fun,

NL

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thanks was trying to be clever and use fully manual but really struggled as I couldnt seem to get the exposure to shift but I can get it to move on AV so I took a few on av and manual played about with it and deleted the duds.. see what you think..poor dog was getting fed up and I nearly froze my feet off! ps my manual is so dog eared with me reading it Ive had to sellotape it together !
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/m...s/IMG_6465.jpg
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/m...s/IMG_6488.jpg
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/m...s/IMG_6496.jpg

They look pretty good to me.