BetterPhoto Q&A
Category: How to do Landscape Photography and Nature Photos

Photography Question 

Manish Issar
 

Shooting Falling Snow


Hi. Could someone tell me what is the right exposure to catch the snow falling at night and in broad daylight (by broad daylight, I mean an overcast day). We are going to have snow tomorrow during the day and night. I don't want to miss it. I have a 28-80mm lens mount on a Canon EOS Rebel k2 body. Thanks.


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January 21, 2005

 

Bob Cammarata
  ...Never tried this myself, but it sounds like a fun challenge. If I were attempting this, my first priority would be to keep the snowflakes from falling onto my lens. A lens hood would help to prevent this, but better still, I would shoot from under a porch or canopy so my equipment stays dry.
I would use a faster film (ISO 400), to give me the depth of field I need to capture as many flakes as possible - both near and far.
I would select a shutter speed of 1/125 second, if the snowflakes were large and floating gently to earth, and 1/250 second or faster if they were wind-blown (with the matching aperture setting for the available light, metered off a gray card.)
I would pre-focus the 28-80 at the minimum focus distance, and set the zoom at around 50mm. I would then take several shots, bracketing with the aperture in 1/2-stop increments.

For night time, I would follow the same procedure to keep my equipment out of the weather, and use flash to freeze the snowflakes falling in front of me.
I would use a slower shutter speed of around 1/30 to 1/15 second (with a tripod) ... to allow some ambient light to record what's going on in the background.


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January 21, 2005

 
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