Thank you Lies and Julie for your advice. Even though the sun never made an appearance at all today, I did manage to get these shots this afternoon. They are better than the first ones don’t you think, but I’m still not totally happy with them. I am hoping we get some brighter weather this weekend so I have better lighting conditions.
Hi Andrea, yes better. Not as blue as your other photos. Where you using automatic settings? Look slightly underexposed. Fun pictures of your handsome boy. Those Allie kids certainly have big heads!
What a handsome guy! I don’t think I could tell him from Roman, except that he looks a bit more red.
In the book “Understanding Exposure” the author talks specifically about taking photos with snow in the scene. The light meter is designed in a way that it tries to turn the white of snow into gray (18 percent) in the photo by incorrectly underexposing. The cure is to compensate by adding 1 stop (or 2/3, can’t remember) of exposure. That would fix the brightness. You can do this by adding + 1 (or try + 2/3) on your exposure compensation, which all cameras have.
Chris
The other way to fix it would be to take a “spot” meter reading from your pup’s red area (not the black areas, as you will get overexposure) and then locking the exposure so that it doesn’t readjust/change.
@Chris
“locking” should be “lock” @Chris
@Julie No, the shots I posted were in Shutter Priority Mode. I tried a couple in automatic setting, but the shutter speed was too slow for the effect I was after. I then switched to Shutter Priority so I could control the shutter speed but the aperture setting wasn’t perfect so the exposure was slightly off.
@Chris Yes, I know, I have long thought the same thing. Along with DeNiro (of course) Roman, Lindi and the “H” girls have stolen my heart!
Thanks for your advice on the snow shots, it was most helpful. As I just mentioned to Julie, I used the Shutter Priority Mode to try and freeze the shots, but in this mode, the aperture is set automatically by the camera and because of the difficult lighting conditions (white snow/dark subject and not a particularly bright day), it obviously struggled to get the correct exposure.
At the weekend, if we get decent weather, I am going to use the 100% manual mode and experiment with the exposure compensation as you suggested. Hopefully “Fun in the Snow Attempt 3” will be perfect!
If you’re going manual mode, it should be pretty easy. All you have to do is set the shutter to what you need–at least 1/500 for the movement, and then just dial in the aperature to where the meter reading shows 2 or 3 bars to the right of center (on the + side). Essentially, the camera will tell you that you are overexposing, but that’s what you want to do, as the meter is wrong when there’s snow.
There’s no way for the camera to know that you’re shooting in snow, so the meter will tell you to underexpose, which is what will happen automatically when you are using either the auto or shutter prioity modes. If you use the exposure compensation, at + 2/3 or +1, you are essentially doing the same thing as above, so you only need to use it when you are letting the camera decide the settings, which is what happens anytime you are not in full manual.
If you can’t get a reasonable shutter speed (at least 500), then just bump up the ISO until you can.
Hope this helps.
Chris
Yesterday we had a little bit of sunshine but mostly it was a very cloudy gray day, so I did some experimenting. I took some scene photos with lots of snow in the frame. I left it on automatic, put WB on cloudy, I found that I had to use the +/- adjustment overexposing by over 4 steps, I have my camera set on 1/3 steps.
@Julie Unfortunately we didn’t have much sun either so my intentions of getting some shots worthy of your blog were quashed. Based upon your and Chris’ advice, I will definitely try overexposing to get brighter, whiter shots.
Although Niro did not get the chance to show off his modeling skills, we did obedience and focus train in the back yard. His long downs are coming along great (I think Ron was surprised last summer how well Niro did on that exercise). I have also got him staying in a down position when I throw his favorite toy and he does not release until I give him the break command.
Good work Andrea! Yes Ron was impressed with his long down and so was Diane who was also there and saw it. What warning about using the +/- adjustment, you have to remember to change it back when you are no longer shooting in snow scenes! I am the worst at remembering to un-do my adjustments.