From the North Pole to the South Pole and just about every country in between there are many places where irresistible, snowy, pristine white landscapes (and urban-scapes) can be found to photograph.
If you shoot in full automatic mode or use any of your camera’s settings in auto, then you risk your pictures looking dull and/or not so white. This is because the brightness of the snow can confuse your camera’s exposure meter and the whiteness of the snow can confuse its white balance meter. On top of that the coldness can play havoc with your battery, camera and lenses.
Dealing with these challenges is easy once you understand how to compensate for how your camera will behave in these conditions.
Brightness:
The sun reflecting off the white snow creates a very bright, high contrast situation. This will trick your camera’s light meter and it might underexpose the shot resulting in a flat and grey-ish picture. This is because your camera simply “thinks” what it is sensing is too bright.
Tips to compensate:
- If you use a point and shoot (compact) camera it may have a “snow” setting – select it and the camera will adjust the exposure for the bright conditions.
- See if your camera allows you to adjust the exposure using a control called “exposure compensation”. If it does increase the exposure by +1/3 to +2/3.
What these two techniques are doing is simply telling your camera that the subject is bright and not to under expose the shot.
If your camera displays a histogram once it takes a picture, then for a picture with a lot of snow, most of the histogram’s curve should be weighted to the right hand side. If it is weighted in the middle, your shot is most likely under exposed. If it is too far to the right and/or going off the scale, then the shot is over exposed and the bright parts will just look pure white with zero detail.
Whiteness:
When you take a picture of something white you want it to look white but your camera may not always get this right. Cameras have a setting called “White Balance” and this is used to help ensure that colours (including whites) are correctly represented.
All light has a particular colour cast (temperature) and this in turn affects how colours and whites look. For example, daylight is considered a “cool” light as it contains a lot of blue. Contrast this to an incandescent light bulb which is considered “warm” as it contains a lot of yellow.
If you put your camera into full automatic shooting, it will also put the white balance into automatic. This means your camera will try and decide the temperature of the light and if it gets it wrong your snow will not look white.
Tips to compensate (if the image on the playback screen does not show the snow as white):
- If shooting in full sunshine, change the white balance to “Daylight”, take a test shot, review the result.
- If shooting in the shade or in cloud conditions, change the white balance to “Shade” or “Cloudy” as needed, take a test shot, review the result.
You may need to experiment until you get the result you desire.
Photo Editing Software Bewares:
If your camera has under exposed or got the white balance wrong, you can correct these to some extend in photo editing software. However most people will shoot in the JPEG (.jpg) file format which can limit the extent of the corrections that can be made and it also degrades the quality of your file every time you save it.
To give yourself some extra leeway later on, shoot in your camera’s RAW file format. This format simply records the scene and the camera does not process or change the information in any way (like it does when it creates a JPEG file). RAW is typically available on higher end point and shoot cameras and DSLR cameras. RAW will give you more flexibility to make adjustments in photo editing software and it will not degrade the quality of your file. Note, RAW files must be processed in software later on as the images are very flat. They are also much larger than JPEG files so your memory card will not hold as many files.
Freezing Temperatures:
Most cameras and their memory cards will operate in freezing conditions however check the manual before you set out so that you know their limits. Batteries will tend to lose their charge faster in cold conditions so take a spare and keep it close to your body to help retain its charge; again, read the battery’s specifications to ensure you know how it will behave.
When taking your camera out of the cold and back into a warmer environment, it may develop condensation not only on the outside, but on the inside too. This will dry out in time but try and prevent it to start with by placing your camera in a small drink cooler bag (or wrap it in a jumper and put it in a zip lock bag) before you go inside. This will allow your camera to adjust to the new conditions more slowly and minimise the risk of condensation
Note: The supporting pictures to this article were shot in RAW and then edited in Adobe Lightroom to illustrate the effects of the various points being made.