I would like to learn how to take a nice portrait in the snow. I am very new to photography and all of my snow photos look really bad! It is easy for me to see my settings are way off but I have no idea what settings are good for snow. Over a foot of fresh snow fell in my yard over night and I really want to get some shots of my children playing in it today. I'll be using a Nikon D3000 It doesn't have a snow setting like my old point and shoot. The sun is shinning today so the snow is very bright when it's not behind a cloud. Does anyone have any advice?
Well, you've already mentioned the biggest problem shooting photos in the snow: it's bright. Very bright when the sun is out.
Shooting outdoors is always about balancing your light sources. The first thing you need to do is set your camera so the snow isn't completely blown out. Honestly, in my career as a photographer I've never shot snow because I live at the beach in South Carolina! But I would imagine shooting at 100 ISO, f/8 or f/11, at 1/250 exposure might be a good setting. The important setting is your exposure: don't go faster than 1/250!
The second step to getting good portraits in the snow is your flash. If all you have is the built-in flash it will work, but not as well as if you had an SB-80DX or similar strobe. Set your strobe so that it properly lights your children, or whomever you are shooting.
The point is this: set the camera so the snow is properly exposed, then use the strobe or flash to light your children. It's a balancing act, and a difficult one at that so good luck!
@jasonbarnette thank you so much for all the advice! I only have a built-in flash but I'm sure following your setting advice will give me better pictures than what I had. I didn't know where to start with snow. I can see that I was WAY off on my camera settings. THANKS!
You could do a search by tags here or maybe you have some from your p&s. Just to give you an idea of where to start. I´m sure you´ll have to adjust some since not all lens´are equally sensitive to light etc.
I like to use pixlr.com (free editor, don't have to download anything) filter Mimic HDR for scenery, clouds, snow. Don't know how well it'd work for portraits in snow but it's worth a try : )
@schoolnsuch Low ISO, relatively high shutter speed and aperture, the snow will likely reflect a lot of light up for portraits but if you're getting harsh facial shadows a little filler flash even from the onboard one should help.
Raise the shutter speed higher and keep the aperture down for nice soft backgrounds, this looks especially good when the snow is still coming down...
@jasonbarnette@killerjackalope@eholle@chrisra Thank you all so much! It was very cold today so I'm going to play around with this a bit more tomorrow. We have 3 feet of snow in spots in my back yard so it isn't going to melt way very fast. I got a lot of cute shots of the kids playing in the snow so I feel like i made a giant step in the right direction. My 365 for the day is the first shot I took today. I set up my camera the way Jason said and had my hubby step outside to test it out (he had no coat on and was wearing slippers). I like how silly he was acting so I picked it one for my daily photo.
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Shooting outdoors is always about balancing your light sources. The first thing you need to do is set your camera so the snow isn't completely blown out. Honestly, in my career as a photographer I've never shot snow because I live at the beach in South Carolina! But I would imagine shooting at 100 ISO, f/8 or f/11, at 1/250 exposure might be a good setting. The important setting is your exposure: don't go faster than 1/250!
The second step to getting good portraits in the snow is your flash. If all you have is the built-in flash it will work, but not as well as if you had an SB-80DX or similar strobe. Set your strobe so that it properly lights your children, or whomever you are shooting.
The point is this: set the camera so the snow is properly exposed, then use the strobe or flash to light your children. It's a balancing act, and a difficult one at that so good luck!
Another idea is to find some snow shots you like and look at their exif- data. Here´s a couple of examples
@maria
@alexzandrajade
You could do a search by tags here or maybe you have some from your p&s. Just to give you an idea of where to start. I´m sure you´ll have to adjust some since not all lens´are equally sensitive to light etc.
Have fun and enjoy the snow :-)
Raise the shutter speed higher and keep the aperture down for nice soft backgrounds, this looks especially good when the snow is still coming down...