How do you meter? With slide film in the winter I usually spot meter on the snow and try to keep it around 1.5 - 2 stops overexposed. I always use a skylight filter in the winter to minimize any blue color cast.
How do you meter? With slide film in the winter I usually spot meter on the snow and try to keep it around 1.5 - 2 stops overexposed. I always use a skylight filter in the winter to minimize any blue color cast.
Also I've shot lots of Sunny 16 exposures on slide film in the winter and that seems to work just fine. For example none of these shots were metered, just a Sunny 16-based exposure and all on Provia 400X. I'd guess most of them were something like f/11 and 1/500 s.
Ice fog on the Yukon River by Anthony DeLorenzo, on Flickr
Dezadeash River and St. Elias Mountains by Anthony DeLorenzo, on Flickr
Sun dogs over the Yukon River by Anthony DeLorenzo, on Flickr
Overexposed? I thought I should underexpose because of the snow reflecting too much light and maybe could mislead my meter?
Nope. If you take a spot metering of snow and shoot at that setting, the snow will appear middle gray. If you then underexpose, the snow will appear even darker than middle gray. So in order to make snow look like snow, you would overexpose from the middle gray setting so that it appears lighter in tone, like zone 7 or 8. This is a bit of an oversimplification, because there may be lots of strong light in the scene, but it explains the basic tonal consideration for the snow.
Oh okay, thanks for the explanation then. Same thing if I meter with a hand meter in reflective light?
Bookmarks