Polar Bears and snow.

James Carpenter

James Carpenter

Well-known member
i am going to be filming up north in canada with an hpx170, polar bears to be exact and I'm a little worried about all that white against white.

does anyone know of a scene file desinged for snow, i'm also a newbie when it comes to the tech side of a camera so i was looking for a little help.

anyone care to throw me some ideas?

THANKS!
 
Pick up a polarized filter. It will help to cut down the glare of the white and pick up the detail of the snow's texture. The snowboard/ski filming industry use them a lot.
 
Would cranking the Master Ped be good for this situation?
I don't know that it would (have never shot snow), but am curious.
 
Changing master pedestal would have little effect in an all white environment.
 
That's what I thought, on the one hand.
On the other hand, I thought if there were any shadow or gradations of light whatsoever, it might help. I knew it was a longshot, though.
And by cranking, I meant down, minus, of course.

flambe- Master Pedestal (as Google or this forum will tell you) is the black levels- it controls the dark areas of the image and the shadows.
Lowering it pulls the dark areas into black ("crushing the blacks") and increases contrast.
Raising it lowers contrast and lightens dark areas.

Here's a visual aid:
http://www.dvxuser.com/articles/MP/

Good luck!
 
I've done lots of shooting up north and in Antarctica as well. (I have an HPX170, but I haven't shot up there with it, so my advice is more general).

Firstly, polar bears aren't actually white, they are much more yellow than you might think, and you can use this to spot the bears from farther away. I had no problem with overexposing the bears while they were on the ice/snow. If you let your camera auto expose, you will actually find that it preferentially underexposes because there is so much light bouncing and reflecting around off the ice. I think this is ok, because you can bring the levels up a bit in post to get the right amount of brightness in the bear and the ice. There may be a bit of noise in the darker parts, but you can use a denoise plug in to help with this.

Where you might run into trouble is when you are filming swimming bears. In bright light situations (what time of year will you be shooting?), if the light colored bear is swimming in the much darker water, that is when you need to make sure that that bear itself isn't over exposed. Don't trust your auto iris because most of your frame will be darker water. Knock the exposure down to preserve detail in the bear.

I hope you get some good access to some bears. Unfortunately most mature bears in Canada's Arctic tend to run away from you because they have been shot at before by hunters. The younger, less experienced bears are the ones that stick around. Also, don't get eaten by a bear! Polar bears actually want to eat you, so make sure someone has a firearm to scare them off if they get too close! How will you be viewing the bears?

Good luck!
 
Polarizers work wonders in the snow, especially on a sunny day. Snow is not easy to work with and it also becomes difficult to view your LCD or viewfinder. As someone who films in snow over 100 days a year, I can tell you its harder to shoot on then pretty much any other environment especially when its really bright or flat lighting.
Couple things. 1. Dont trust your viewfinder or LCD for more then Zebra (on a bright or flat lit day). 2. Use a Zebra setting of 90% (85 sometimes works too, 95 seems to get too bright and 100 will cause blow outs.. mostly obvious, but maybe you use something different). 3. Try to use a polarizer if possible. It will help with shadows and details, and it will obviously make your sky look blue rather then a flatter hazy greenish gray 4. Your white balance loves to play games with you throughout the day, especially at sunset. Just always be keeping an eye out on your white balance.

The poster above mentioned letting the camera sit on auto but it might under expose some if you do. That is true, and thats where the problem lies. A reason snow can be difficult to shoot in is because its easy to over expose and blow out part of a shot and its easy to under expose, which is not good either. Under exposing will cause your white snow to become a blueish gray color that is nearly impossible to fix in post. In fact, bringing the levels in post doesnt fix this problem. Im no color expert, but I have worked for years to try to correct under exposed shots to match true whites (ie: double angles of something where one shots under exposed and the other is not) and still have never been happy with it. Slightly under exposed is not a problem, but anything more then that and raising the levels will cause a non white snow and will lose more detail then you would expect.

Thats just a few things I have learned from it. I learned to shoot first on snow before anything else, so its a familiar world to me, but i still have issues doing it.

Oh also, use your coring. I just notice a lot of grain in the sky when exposing to snow on a super bright day. Im not sure if its an issue even off snow, but I boost my coring pretty high to get a nice non grainy blue sky (which will look even better with a polarizer).

Hope that helps and have fun!
 
Shot in Northern Sask two winters ago - snowmobiling / dogsledding / snowshoeing travel videos for Canada tourism. Used a pair of 200's but essentially the same.
Zeroed out the settings and used a matte box with suitable ND's (grads are great here) and a Pola. As mentioned above underexposing by leaving it in Auto is a real hazard and looks as bad or worse than over exposure.
As always if your budget / time allows do a few hours of test shots, and then look at them on your laptop to asses what will work for you.

G.
 
Thanks for all your tips.

A decent polariser and the built in ND filters worked like a charm. Auto settings for the most part did great too. Now for the "fun" part of logging all my footage!

Again, thanks for all the help on this!
 
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