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Skiing photography

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
An article here provides good tips on the art of good skiing and boarding photos

http://www.nyip.com/tips/current/skiing.php
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Quite good, one thing to bear in mind, if teh temperature is below -10C do not touch any bare metal on your camera with your skin, either your fingers or when you hold it up to your face, there's a good chance below -10C that the moisture in your skin will cause it to freeze to the bare metal, if taking photographs in these sort of temps keep the metal away from your face and wear silk or cotton gloves inside your ski gloves.

With traditional Film SLR cameras set the Exposure compensation dial to +1 or +2 when photographing scenes with a high percentage of snow or the snow will come out grey in your pictures
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
D G Orf wrote:
With traditional Film SLR cameras set the Exposure compensation dial to +1 or +2 when photographing scenes with a high percentage of snow or the snow will come out grey in your pictures


I'd recommend that advice for digital camera (or phone) users as well.
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Wear The Fox Hat, you should not need to adjust a digital camera as they normally have an automatic white balance function, however if you do get grey snow on a digital camera try adjusting the white balance function
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
D G Orf, I just tend to leave the white balance on Auto, but have found in the past that it can be improved by adjusting the exposure comp.
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Wear The Fox Hat, it depends on the digital camera, the better ones let you adjust for exposure compensation the lower specified ones need to use white balance
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 Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
What the article doesn't mention (oddly) is that for us old-fashioned SLR film camera users, film speed affects image clarity as much as anything else. High speed film i.e. 400+ is naturally better at "freezing" (sorry wink ) the action so that you get a nice clear image of the subject - often it's the only way to avoid a case of the blurs! Only prob is that the higher the film speed gets, the more granulated the image gets too....

Some higher end digis have an artifical "film" speed setting to allow for a bit of freestyle shooting (but I haven't seen it appearing in bog-standard digis).
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
Manda, just about all digital cameras nowadays have ISO selection! Most go 100 - 400 (with potentially nosiy results at or above 200 due to the small sensor size), dSLRs have ISOs up to 1600 and beyond I think!
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Manda, not intending to correct you, however all films have the ability to freeze action, faster film simply lets you freeze action at a lower light level, for skiing pictures you can often use ASA100 or ASA200 film with excelent results, I've even used Kodachrome 64 transparency film with superb results, these days I tend to use a compact digital camera because I can check the results there and then before transfering the pics to a laptop later on, I used to ski with an F3 with motordrive and 80-200 f2.8 lens, when you do that you get very good at not falling over Laughing
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Ski the Net with snowHeads
D G Orf, I think that exposure and white balance are different things.

Any exposure system (whether on a digicam or a film camara) works to an assumed exposure level. Large expanses of snow will confuse the camera because it does not believe that it is as light as it really is - and so it underexposes as a result in order to make it more like the image that it expects. Setting an exposure adjustment for all photos then sorts that out.

Getting the right white balance with a digicam is important unless you are shooting raw files. I never use Auto WB as you never know what the camera is thinking. I'd much rather make my own decision and set it (although I usually shoot raw and so can alter the WB later with no loss of quality if I got it slightly wrong). But the beauty of digicams is that at least you have the choice - with film you are just stuck with the WB of the film itself.

As for speed, I have often used 100 iso film in the Alps and on sunny days you could even get away with 50 iso velvia (my favourite film).
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Tony Lane, quite correct exposure and white balance are indeed very different, however white balace works in snowy conditions under daylight which is why it is mentioned, exposure problems occur using film cameras because exposure meters are designed to work best with an 18% grey tone typically the sort of tone achived with caucasian/asian skin or grass, this metering is then confused by large areas of highly reflective snow which typically causes the camera to expose snow as if it were grass causing it to come out grey, the white balance built into most digital cameras detects this highly reflective white and tells the inbuilt processor to treet it as white not grey, it's not perfect and can be fooled but in general it does work, of course for times when I want accurate colour balance I usually carry a small kodak grey card
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
D G Orf, yep, the 18% grey is what I was alluding to when using my non-technical phrase of an "assumed exposure level". But I'm not sure that I follow that white balance can be used to correct this. WB is simply an adjustment for variable temperature (and therefore colour) of light and if I change the WB of an image on my PC at home I get a very different change compared to when I alter the exposure setting.

If the WB on the camera is set for cold light, the pictures will be too orange. If the WB on the camera is set for warm light, the pictures will be too blue. The best setting for snow depends on the lighting conditions at the time but the fact that mountain light can change rapidly, or you may quickly be on a different side of a mountain since your last photo etc, I would say that there are good reasons for taking raw digital images when skiing if possible so that that WB can be tweaked at home to get perfect white snow. Or you can trust the auto setting and hope that the camera gets it right. I still think that the exposure needs some thought or adjustment though.

AFAIK, the exposure problem happens with digicams just as it does with film cameras as the metering system is the same. And as I'm sure you know it happens in reverse as well - so that a picture of a beautiful black labrador will show a dull grey coat because the camera isn't set to think that you intend the black to be properly black. In that case a negative exposure comp is required.
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 So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
I've never seemed to have a problem with white balance in my snow shots, but maybe I'm not that discerning. I have to correct exposure sometimes but I think the digitals are definitely better than film compacts in that respect. Maybe the metering systems are smarter these days. RAW files are huge. I like to take a couple of memory cards on holiday with me, fill them, though deleting each evening, and upload only once I'm home. I need my compression.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
slikedges, i don't tend to have that problem with my three 1gb cards and a 0.5gb card! That keeps me happy in RAW files for most holidays.

Modern compacts are definitely better than older ones for exposure - and most of the advances are going into digicams these days. The tolerances for digital are still not as good as film, but that's not something that worries most people.
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
D G Orf, yes. I've sucessfully used ISO100 for action shots on the slopes too. But then you and I know a bit about photography.

If a muggins, who uses a point & shoot on the slopes and doesn't even understand what film speed means, asked me what film speed to use for action shots, then unless they were prepared to stick around for a long (and somewhat boring) explanation about photograph, then I'd tell them to select a film with speed of ISO400 or above regardless of the light.
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Manda, yep, once rated some TMax film at ASA 12,500 to take some shorts of a concert (I had a press pass) that came out really well, but the nice thing about ski photography is that you only tend to worry about photographing things in good conditions which means you only need fairly slow film
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
I've used Ektar 25 years ago on the slopes, but 64 or 100 was my preferred route. But if I was going with a long lens (300mm+) then I'd probably go for a 400 film, if only to make faster shutter speeds possible when hand holding.
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
My digital compact allows you to choose programs that automatically compensate for various scenarious, such as snow, low light, indoor shooting, etc. I imagine it has the same effect as adjusting the exposure by a stop or two, but it saves me from having to think. And I'm sure it's much easier for people who don't really understand what's going on.

As the article says, I've always had much more success with digital than film photography. My film SLR refuses to work in very low temperatures, and decent length lenses are too big to keep inside my ski jacket. It's better to take a lower quality photo from a compact than to be unable to shoot anything at all.
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Quote:

My film SLR refuses to work in very low temperatures


I mourn the passing of at least one mechanical shutter speed as I had on my FG 1/90 and FE2 1/250.
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