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Flint in the Snow

My dad still uses a $300 camera I gave him and my mother a few years ago, but it takes decent shots. Snow proves difficult (as it does, from what little I understand, for all cameras).

Flint in the Snow

I've been looking around for an online digital photography class (one worth taking, and thus, one that probably costs money) and haven't found many. Bummer. But I'll keep looking…

8 Responses to "Flint in the Snow"

  1. Snow is problematic because camera light meters are all designed with one principle in mind: that a "normal" scene in nature reflects 18% of the light cast on it. Because of this, they all try to average the scene out to 18% gray. Normally this works fine, but where it breaks down is if you have a scene that doesn't average out to 18% gray--i.e. a scene that is either very white or very black. When your camera sees a big snowbank, all it's thinking is that it needs to make all of that white gray, when in actuality it should be white.

    This is why photographers sometimes use a gray card. They take the meter reading off something that *is* 18% gray and that sets the light meter correctly for the current light levels. Another technique I use is to take the meter reading off something that is closer to normal, lock the exposure (by pressing the button down partly), and then recompose the picture. The only problem with this is that on most automatic cameras, locking the exposure also locks the focus. So sometimes this can throw off your autofocus. You can also use the camera's exposure compensation to get around this problem.

    Phew--there's what I know about the snow problem...

  2. Luminous Landscape have some great tutorials and an interesting "Understanding..." series:

    http://www.luminous-landscape.com/

  3. You can try the Olympus Lessons.. but they are probably too basic for your needs.

  4. The luminous landscape has some great articles.

    There is a really good one on exposure that talks about using grey cards and digital cameras.

    Basically grey cards (mid tones) are great for film cameras but digital works better if you set your exposure for the highlights

    Expose (to the) Right

  5. weird. I had a weimaraner too. He died a few years back though, and I am in school now... so no dog.

    My pup was named Rommel.