By The Light Photography, LLC
Underexposed Gray Snow
A Better Exposure
You may have noticed that many of your photos of snow come out looking gray. Well this is because your expensive little digicam or your uber expensive DSLR doesn’t know any better. The brilliant technology in your camera is designed to take a peek at what you are pointing at and take a picture so that everything looks 18% gray. Go outside with your camera next time it snows and test the theory, white fluffy snow, dull gray photo. It works great for most other scenes where there is a blend of light and dark that averages out to be 18% gray. The subjects that cause trouble are bright white and pure black. Both of these extremes fool your camera into spitting out a nasty muddy looking photo.
How can you fix this? Well the answer is complicated because for every camera and every camera type there will be a different solution. Follow the read more link below to find the solution for you and your camera.
For starters we will discuss what needs to happen for your photo to come out looking white instead of gray. By default your camera will ‘meter’ what it is looking at for 18% gray (yes this may vary in point and shoots but the theory is the same.) What you need to do is tell your camera that what it is looking at is actually much brighter than 18% gray. There are several ways to do this and they all depend on how advanced or how simple your camera is. Let’s start with DSLR because as complex as they may seem they are actually easier to explain, from there I will try to tackle some of the more popular brands of point and shoots.
Manually telling your DSLR that what it is looking at is actually brighter than 18% gray is easy. Your DSLR has a built in light meter which you are in charge of. When you point the camera at a subject the camera attempts to expose it for a neutral exposure value (0 Exposure Value, 18% gray.) What you need to do is use your brain and feed that info to your camera. The easiest way to do this is to adjust the exposure compensation for your camera. This adjustment is to tell the camera that the scene is actually brighter or darker than the neutral 18% gray. In the case of pure white snow, which is much brighter than gray, you need to adjust the exposure up to positive EV (Exposure Value) compensation. This tells your camera “OK I know you think this is gray but it’s actually white, which is brighter than gray.” Usually you will need to adjust this between 2/3 of a stop and two full stops. Here is a link to a Canon explanation of how to accomplish this.
Another DSLR method is to use what is called a spot metering mode. More than likely you are using your DSLR in a mode called (Canon) evaluative metering or Matrix metering (Nikon?) where the camera takes in the whole frame and essentially tries to figure out what the scene is and meter properly for it. As we know now this does not always result in a proper exposure. A simple way to correct this is to place the camera into spot metering mode where the camera only evaluated a small circle of information at the center of the frame. This allows you to tell the camera what part of the image should be neutral. On a snowy white overcast day pointing the spot meter at your hand and locking exposure or pointing it just below your subjects eye will usually get a proper exposure of your subject with nice white snow in the background.
Now on to point and shoots… The long and the short of it is is that there are far to many compact cameras to give a single answer to this problem. Some of the more advanced point and shoots can be instructed just like a DSLR as above. Some of the ‘dumber’ cameras actually have a ‘snow mode’ which figures all of this out for you. I suggest looking in your instruction manual for instructions on adjusting exposure or on setting a snow mode. What I will do to help is point you towards the various manufacturers support sites. Now that you know what needs to happen it shouldn’t be too hard to find the right setting for your particular camera. If all else fails you should at least be able to correct your photos to a degree with software… But that’s a different article.
In closing I leave you with a question:
How difficult would you expect shooting a zebra to be as far as exposure? Remember that the zebra is basically half pure white and half pure black…
Half Black Half White
