shooting in snow???

J

jjbrown

Member
I just started shooting with my sweet dvx and was having trouble with blowing out while shooting in snow on a nice blue-bird day. Does anyone have any tips? My polarizer is in the mail, but if there is any other info out there, i'm listening.
Also, any good recomendations of a good backpack for more action sport locations (mtn. biking, snowboarding, hiking)?
 
Try setting your iris manually . You may have to use the ND filter as well .
I have never had a problem shooting in snow even on a bright sunny day .
 
I always use the zebras on 100. Than I frame up my shot and fill the snow with the zebras. After I iris down so that it's one stop away from filling the screen with the zebras. Thats how you know it's bright enough without being blown out. oh yeah, always run it on manual iris

not so sure about a bag.
 
HonestDon said:
I always use the zebras on 100. ....... I iris down so that it's one stop away from filling the screen with the zebras. Thats how you know it's bright enough without being blown out. .............
If I am understanding you correctly, "one stop away from filling the screen with zebras" would mean that you are seeing zebras in most of your image.
Did you mean to say that you are irising down to the point at which the 100% zebras just disappear and then one additional stop further down from that ?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Thanks guys. I guess the zebras confuse me a little. Is it bad to have any zebras or is it okay to have a few (just not on your subject)? Any insight?
When in snow, I had the iris usually almost all the way closed, the nd filters on one and two and could find no inbetween. it was either too dark or blown out (just a lot of contrast). I am shooting monday and will play around some more.
 
Having zebras present in a scene is ok and not unusual, but it really depends upon where they are present. For example, properly exposing a subject that is backlit will unavoidably overexpose the background to any degree. As a general rule use 80% for faces and 100% for highlight areas. It is also helpful to set your iris offset to -2 and toggle between manual iris and auto iris just to compare what the camera wants and what you think you want .

All of my shooting is outdoors and I'm learning just how subjective this can be because of different lighting/weather conditions. Havent shot in snow but I would guess that in bright sun you would have your nd set to 1/64, be using 100% zebra setting and be in the f5.6 to f16 range. Again, toggle your iris button to see where you are in relation to what the camera wants. If you are not in a useable f-stop range then you would need an additional nd.

Another thing you might want to consider is going out and shooting different scenes just to practice adjusting exposure. Set your exposure manually, compare it to what the camera wants and talk yourself through it the whole time to record what you are doing and why. Then watch the tape at home and see what you got right and what you got wrong. Been doing this a while and it certainly is helping my understanding of whats going on.

Last but not least, search "zebras" and "exposure" for some great additional info.
 
i made my own back pack to carry my camera in while snow boarding..
I went down to this store near my house called Michaels which is a crafts store which sells all different types of foam. I got two descent sized pieces so that one would be the bottom half and the other the top half.. On the bottom piece, i laid my camera on it, and traced it with a sharpy. Inorder to cut the foam, i use a turkey cutter. Suprisingly they cut very well and do not make ANY foam mess. I then pretty much outline the cut of the camera making sure not to go too deep or too shallow. ONce i had the outline cut, i pretty much folded the foam in apart (the opposite of if you were folding it together like a taco) and then that makes it easy to cut out the inside. And then for the top you do that same thing. When your done, shave whatever you need of the block so it will fit in your back pack. Mine works really well and is SUPER protected. Hopefully that all made sense.
 
i have shot a bunch of snowboarding with the dvx and i have had no problem with blown out images but i set my nd filter to the top and i use maunal iris and bring it down quiet a bit i use 100% zebra also and jsut make sure your rider or what ever your shooting doesnt have zebras on it, if all fails depends on whether ur shoot 60i or 24p and so one you can change your shutter speed to 1/120 or what ever you like but note that it wil give your footage a diffrent look
 
Snow is great to shoot in. All those photons bouncing around evenly lighting just about everything. Im not sure about others here, but on all my cams I set zebras at 95. This doesnt mean part of my image wont have them, sometimes in uncontrolled environments you cant escape them.

In the snow however you have 2 conditions. Overcast - in which case you should be shooting without any zebras showing up. And sunny - in which case when your subject is exposed properly you may have some, if you cant brighten your subject then its just something you have to deal with.
 
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