White balance and exposure in snow

Monday 27 December 2021, 20:10 by Nando Harmsen | 9,511 views | 4 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Now that winter has started, we are naturally hoping for snow as photographers. What could be more beautiful than a landscape under a white blanket, children playing in the snow, or photographing in a snowstorm?

There is a chance that your camera will get confused when you start shooting. So pay attention to white balance and exposure in snow.

Photographing a snowy world, or taking photos in it, is not that difficult. You just need to take a few things into account for the best results.

That all has to do with white balance and exposure. These two things can sometimes lead to unexpected results.

Photographing in the snow is great fun. Just make sure you dress properly.
For photographers who shoot raw, this may be slightly less relevant. They can often correct these things during post-processing. White balance, at least. Correcting the exposure can perhaps cause some extra noise, depending on your camera.

If you are a jpeg photographer, it is much more important to get the white balance and exposure right. So do not blindly rely on what the camera sets for you. With all that white snow, the metering system gets confused.

White balance

Anyone who shoots with automatic white balance runs the risk of having a different white balance set for every photo. After all, the camera measures it again for every photo.

Modern cameras have very good auto white balance, but it can be useful to set it manually for each lighting situation.

The snow reflects the light. Including the colour of the light. If you shoot during the blue hour, the colour of the snow will also shift towards blue.
Remember that a white snowy surface is a perfect reflector. White reflects light, and therefore the colour of the light too. If there is a beautiful sunset with intense colours, the snow will be anything but white. White balance can sometimes compensate for those reflected colours.

The camera may sometimes correct a colour cast that is actually there. Fortunately, it will not become as extreme as in this example. The white balance here was set using the snow.
You also need to take the correct colour balance into account during post-processing. Pure white snow under a coloured sky at sunrise or sunset is simply not possible. So be careful with the white balance, and choose a value that does not distort reality.

During post-processing, try not to make the snow white if it is not white. It creates an unnatural image, as in this example, where a mask was used to adjust the white balance locally.
For the jpeg photographer, this is essential because the photo is the final result. For the raw photographer, it is less important. They can still adjust everything afterwards. As long as they remember that white snow takes on the colour tint of the available light.

Exposure

Exposure often goes wrong. Especially when the snow fills large parts of the photo, the exposure meter will get confused.

This is because the exposure meter assumes that the average brightness of the photo corresponds to 18% reflected light. This is also commonly called 18% grey.

The exposure meter assumes that an average of 18% of the light is reflected. With snow, this is much more, but the exposure meter does not understand that. So the photo will be underexposed.
A photo with a lot of white snow in the frame will therefore always be underexposed. The photo can be up to 2 stops too dark. So it is a good idea to set the metered exposure 1 or 2 stops brighter when there is snow in the frame.

If you are a photographer who shoots in A mode or S mode, aperture priority or shutter priority, you can set the exposure compensation button to +1 EV or +2 EV. This will automatically make every photo 1 or 2 stops brighter.

This photo is 2 stops brighter than the exposure indicated by the meter, and the exposure is now correct.
If you are a photographer who prefers to set everything manually, you need to make the shutter speed 1 or 2 stops longer for each measurement, or open the aperture by 1 or 2 stops.

Of course, you can also choose to increase the ISO by 1 or 2 stops. Remember that you have to apply the correction manually for every new light measurement.

When should you expose 1 stop longer, and when 2 stops? That depends on the amount of white in your photo. The more white you have in the photo, the more stops you need to correct.

In any case, use your histogram to see whether the photo you have taken is light enough. It will at least give you an indication.

When snow is falling

When snow starts falling, head out. Make sure you are the first photographer to arrive at your destination. That way, you will still have a landscape without footprints. In any case, be careful and enjoy the winter landscape.

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