Photo tips on snow and Christmas Lightings

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Permalink Reply by CameraClicker on December 17, 2008 at 9:43am

Christmas lights are a lot of bright spots on a dark background. The camera's metering will try to bring the brightness of the photo up to a level it finds acceptable, which frequently burns out the lights. Under exposing by a stop or two, or three will usually correct this. Check the histogram and the preview of the photo on the camera's LCD screen to see if you got the exposure you are looking for. If not, adjust brighter or darker and take another shot, then check again. Once you have practiced you will get a feel for the settings that give results you desire.

Snow is the opposite, lots of very bright reflective surface, not so much darker subject. Again the camera's metering will try to bring the brightness to a predefined level. Typically you have to overexpose half a stop to a stop and a half from what the meter says to get white snow. Depending upon the subject, using the meter in spot mode will help get the correct exposure for your subject without worrying about the snow. Take some test shots, check the histogram, look at the LCD screen. Some subjects will benefit from firing the flash for fill. This can take some practice too. I get the best fill results by using manual mode for both the camera and flash.

Things sometimes look quite different on the computer screen or in print than they look on the LCD screen of the camera so you have to be aware when evaluating in the field. Once you have done it for a while, you will get a feel for your equipment and how to get the desired results.

I am not going to give specific advice about setting ISO, f stops and shutter speeds because different combinations can produce the same result for a specific scene and different scenes require quite different settings. Understanding how the camera meters and exposes for any given scene will serve you better than "set f/8 and 1/60 with ISO 200".

Practice, practice, practice.... At least with digital cameras you do not have to pay for developing before seeing the results. If you take a photo that is way off what you wanted, delete it and take another.

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Permalink Reply by Herman on December 17, 2008 at 11:17am

Thank you so much for your advice.......

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Permalink Reply by Sean on December 17, 2008 at 6:15pm

Are you shooting both at night? Get a good tripod. I like to play with my camera just to see what different setting will give me. For an example.The first image is iso=100, fstop=25, and shutter speed at 30 seconds...the second shot is iso=400, fstop=4.5, and shutter speed at 1.6 seconds...notice how the different settings capture the light. One is softer the other is sharp...different skys, different details, practice, practice, practice...but play play play...when you play around with the settings you will find your own style.

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Permalink Reply by Herman on December 19, 2008 at 4:18pm

Thank you....appreciate it:-)))

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