Tips for dslr settings when snowboarding

MichaelHo

MichaelHo

MichaelHo

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Hi,
Am off to Italy to snowboard this weekend, am taking my 400D with me. Lens I have are the standard 18-55 lens, 50mm 1.8 and macro 100.
Just wondering if there were any tips for using slr equipment on the mountains? E.g. how to avoid condensation when swapping lenses, any EV adjustments to be made for the snow?

Any help will be appreciated.

Michael
 
MichaelHo said:
Hi,
Am off to Italy to snowboard this weekend, am taking my 400D with me. Lens I have are the standard 18-55 lens, 50mm 1.8 and macro 100.
Just wondering if there were any tips for using slr equipment on the mountains? E.g. how to avoid condensation when swapping lenses, any EV adjustments to be made for the snow?

Any help will be appreciated.

Michael
Click to expand...

The best advice I can offer you is don't trust your light meter, shooting stuff in the snow can make exposure very difficult as the camera will always be metering off the majority of the scene (pure bright white) which will leave any dark subject looking very underexposed, use exposure compensation to compensate for the brightness of the snow by over exposing by as much as 1 stop for a dark subject, whilst being careful not to totally blow out the snow.
 
middle f number, bracket your shots by using the over-under exposure meeter/adjustment.

EDIT: if you can meter of you subject, lock it, then make your composition. impossible when you are doing action shots

also, are you taking it on the slops? if so make shore your good enough not to fall over, it was worse for me as i have a lenses attached to it which is worth about as much as the 400D body, Ii don't fall over unless I do sill stuff, but that's just so tempting when the conditions are as good as they where.
 
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Thanks for all the responses.

Regarding they gray card, would I have to take a photo of the grey on each separate day, as the lighting conditions may change? If so then it's a bit more of an effort that I'd like, is it used purely just for white balancing?

I have 2x 2gb CF cards and each fit about 200 RAW files, so I think if I take one under and one over exposed pic for every shot it will take up more space than I have.

I have a burton zoom bag and hope that this is good enough to help protect my equipment, I don't plan to take it on the slopes every day, especially not the first day lol fresh feet and that. But on the days I will be taking it up I'll be taking it easy.

So ATM my understanding is to over expose the photos and to use a middle F value, say 7? Consider taking up a gray card to sort out WB.
 
TBH i wouldn't bother with a gray card, if your on the slops.

Lights going to change to much
your going to look like a tit using it
its probably not the easiest thing to ship around

I just chucked mine in the the top of my bag, kept a lid on the tricks
 
I'd say chuck it on Tv mode ISO 100, put the shutter to 1/1000 and then dial in +2/3 and just chimp the histogram making small changes on the fly.

Also, if you're taking shots of your friends jumping etc then try out the 100mm macro as this is the longest lens you have. Plus, try it out on 2.8 with AI Servo whilst tracking them.
 
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Wouldn't it make more sense to dial in about -2/3 of exposure compensation instead to preserve the details in the snow?

Use a ziplock bag and use it to cover the body and lens mount, attach it using a rubber band. Use a lens hood to keep the snow off of the lens. It's a little tricky using a camera through a bag, but it's not too bad.
 
Mint_Sauce said:
I'd say chuck it on Tv mode ISO 100, put the shutter to 1/1000 and then dial in +2/3 and just chimp the histogram making small changes on the fly.
Click to expand...

1000 I think would be a bit overkill, 500-600 will stop 99% of stuff

edit, but if the light is good enough, there is no harm in going a lot higher.
 
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GTRacer said:
Use a ziplock bag and use it to cover the body and lens mount, attach it using a rubber band. Use a lens hood to keep the snow off of the lens. It's a little tricky using a camera through a bag, but it's not too bad.
Click to expand...

no need, unless it is snowing, then i wouldn't take it with me anyway, rubbish light and potential for damage. good thing about snowboarding is you can sit or kneel down, wip the bag off you back, if sitting down there is a nice big gap between your legs, then get the DSLR out, shoot away.

I got this system down to a few seconds
 
Main thing to worry about is shutter speed but at the end of the day its trial and error.

As said slightly overexpose, depending on how bright of a day it is. Heres a shot i got @50mm, f7.1, 1/800sec, iso 100

mark2.jpg
 
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crazyDAJT said:
1000 I think would be a bit overkill, 500-600 will stop 99% of stuff

edit, but if the light is good enough, there is no harm in going a lot higher.
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True but if there's a lot of light then 1000 will give the sharpness and just freeze the image that bit better. But 500-600 if the light isn't too great and you want to keep your aperture open a bit would be more than acceptable.
 
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GTRacer said:
Wouldn't it make more sense to dial in about -2/3 of exposure compensation instead to preserve the details in the snow?

Use a ziplock bag and use it to cover the body and lens mount, attach it using a rubber band. Use a lens hood to keep the snow off of the lens. It's a little tricky using a camera through a bag, but it's not too bad.
Click to expand...

Using an EC of -2/3 would make the photo under exposed, compensating in software afterwards will bring up a lot of noise.

The reason I say use +1 stop is if you're relying on the cameras meter in Av or Tv modes it will see a lot of white and incorrectly meter, all light meters want to make everything 18% grey and in an average scene this is fine. In snow scenes the amount of white makes the meter read lower so you need to dial in around +1 EC.

Also, the digital sensor records the most amount of data at the far right when looking at the histogram. So if you can over-expose the image without clipping the highlights and then in software pull the exposure back down you will get a picture with more detail and less noise. This is called exposing to the right.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

Sorry to go on, I don't know it all if I come across that way - but it's good stuff to know imo.
 
Mint_Sauce said:
Sorry to go on, I don't know it all if I come across that way - but it's good stuff to know imo.
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no, its all good...

wish this thread had bean started before i went on my trip, there was an awful lot of trial and error.

different mettering modes.

different compensations

different F numbers

the list goes on...
 
you're all making it sound like it's some kind of black magic taking pictures in snow :p in my experience my 10D really doesn't have that much trouble metering in snowy conditions. I shoot RAW and generally don't shoot with any exposure comp as it's never really necessary. the sky/trees/person/whatever usually balance out the grey in the shot. Just make sure you're using AI servo when tracking people and don't be surprised when the clouds come in if there isn't that much available light.

one from me: 20mm . ISO100 . f/5.6 . 1/1000sec

CRW_1577s.jpg
 
crazyDAJT said:
TBH i wouldn't bother with a gray card, if your on the slops.

Lights going to change to much
your going to look like a tit using it
its probably not the easiest thing to ship around

I just chucked mine in the the top of my bag, kept a lid on the tricks
Click to expand...

I have a fold up matte plastic gray card that fits in my pocket. If I were using a graycard in snow I'd perhaps need to meter off it once or twice an hour as the light changes. I don't see how it would make you look like a tit? Especially when it would take you all of five seconds to do.

It's also better to underexpose, so take peoples advice on that.
 
Thanks for the advice guys. Am off on Saturday and looking forward to taking some pics.
Will stick it on tv mode and be chimping away!
 
jdderbys said:
im off to chamonix this sat so was just about to ask the same question
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I'll be in Cham on Saturday

Don't think I can afford to being my D70 since I'll be attempting a 2300m ascent - I even cut my hair this morning in order to loose a few grams...
 
try some panning shots as well!
put the camera in to shutter priority depending how much blur in the background you want and the speed they are going, dial in 1/80s-1/150s (could be higher). Make sure its on servo focus and possibly some fill in flash just to freeze the action when the shutter is released.
 
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