Here’s a tip that should help those of you who shoot outdoor events in snowy or sandy conditions. It’s a basic problem: snow and sand, act like a big neutral grey card, and confuse nearly every camera out there. Many photographers, too!
So,in snow, here’s what most cameras will produce when the metering is left on AUTO:
And here we are with some positive exposure compensation dialed in, this time +1.66 ec:
Here are some more
winter photography tips over on our forum,
Digital Grin.
Not in a snowy climate? You can still use the same technique to get better beach photos – the sand combined with bright sunlight fools the cameras meter in the same way!
exposed with “auto metering”
properly exposed with metering set to + 1.3 ec:
How much + EC to dial in? It varies, but +1.3 is rarely wrong in my experience. But try +1.67, too! Experiment, read your camera’s manual and learn how to set exposure compensation – and you’ll be happier on the ski slopes or the shores of the Caribbean!
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December 4th, 2005 at 11:35 pm
So the book I’ve got called understanding exposure says that I should go to +2.00 for snow. I’ve tried that and the pictures generally come out washed out. I’ll definitely have to give the +1.67 a try, thanks!
One thing that does always work out for me is exposing for the sky. I set my 20D up to do partial metering and then set the exposure of the sky nearest my subject to 0.00EV and then recompose on my subject and fire away. I’ve yet to be disappointed. I’m thinking that could work just as well for the sandy environment you’ve got on the 2nd pic.
December 18th, 2005 at 6:51 pm
Great information on whitebalancing and metering. I was wondering if an expodisc or expocap (expoimaging.com) would handle these scenarios well? Anyone tried them out for snow or sand? I’m trying to beg my way for one as a Christmas gift.
December 18th, 2005 at 7:05 pm
Hi SurfaceDamage – well – I hate to give you bad news, but you don’t need an expodisc for whitebalancing the snow – just point your camera at the snow and wb on the snow, with your cameras custom wb function. Of course, expos discs are useful in plenty of other situations
Andy
December 20th, 2005 at 5:29 pm
Andy,
Good point — I guess if you need to correct whitebalance … uh … snow seems to be fairly white (with maybe a few patches of yellow!). The more I thought about it, the more stupid my question seems to be.
I still may look at an expocap/disc for Christmas. I was recently at a holiday party and they had these funky green lights shining on a purple felt pool table and my poor camera didn’t know what to make out of it with auto-white balancing. Crazy colors all over the board.
I’m hoping that the cap/disc would help. Expensive way to test, but I”m sure I’d get good use out of it. Do you have one? Do you use it regularly?
May 24th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Very needed information found here, thank you for your work
June 6th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Yes, the photos are brighter, but both photos show badly blown highlights. It is not so bad (I guess) for the snow to be blown (top right and bottom right), but in the second picture, the man’s shirt and the SAND!?! is totally blown.
June 22nd, 2006 at 8:06 pm
Hi anoun
That’s the point
The snow isn’t the MOST important part of that photo – the boy’s face is. So, there’s plenty of snow that’s not 255 255 255, sure there is some that is. I can live with that 
Same on the flipping beach guys. The sand is not the most important thing, IMO nor are the shirts. I wish I’d shot the flipping beach guys in RAW, but alas, that was with a camera that didn’t have RAW. It’s a choice you have to make at shoot, and I can live with it. Having seen thousands of underexposed snow, ice, beach shots I’ll stick with with overexposing the snow! Thanks for posting.