Skiing Photography Tips

Barks

Barks

Barks

Soldato
Joined
20 Jul 2008
Posts
4,440
I'm off Skiing this Friday, taking with me:

Canon 550D
Tamron 17-55 f2.8
Canon 50mm 1.8

Does anyone have any tips for taking action shots? I don't tend to use f2.8 because unless it's bright sunshine the lens fails to autofocus properly. More specifically, what settings should I have switched on for Point-and-shoot mode?

Cheers
 
Probably the most important thing is getting the right exposure for the snow. Usually when the camera meters, it sees the bright snow and it makes it dark and grey. To combat this, you need to overexpose the shot so that its white and looks like what you are seeing.
 
Will be fine, usually over expose by around 2/3 of a stop and you should be all good :) Make sure you shoot in raw... you shouldn't have any problem stopping down a bit if you want too as lots of bright sunlight and bright snow!

For point and shoot mode, can't really go wrong for AV mode F/4, ISO 400 and exposure compensation for the snow! Might be tempted to hire a longer lens if you are desperate to get some nice shots from a distance :)
 
Excellent, cheers guys as I've said before on here I'm fairly new to photography.

When you say 2/3 of a stop on the camera exposure compensation it has something like this:

-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4

I take it they are referring to the 'stops' each one has several dots in between so at the moment I have set it to roughly 2/3 of the way between 0 and +1. I'm using AV mode at f4.0 and ISO400. It is setting the exposure (today in cloudy poor light) to about 1/40. What sort of exposure do I want to be aiming for? I appreciate in bright snowy conditions it will be significantly faster than this.

Last question: I'm assuming for portrait shots I am safe to use ISO 100 and a longer exposure. I'll probably just use auto mode for this as the camera gets passed around etc.

Thank you very much for the advice.
 
scott212 said:
Excellent, cheers guys as I've said before on here I'm fairly new to photography.

When you say 2/3 of a stop on the camera exposure compensation it has something like this:

-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4

I take it they are referring to the 'stops' each one has several dots in between so at the moment I have set it to roughly 2/3 of the way between 0 and +1. I'm using AV mode at f4.0 and ISO400. It is setting the exposure (today in cloudy poor light) to about 1/40. What sort of exposure do I want to be aiming for? I appreciate in bright snowy conditions it will be significantly faster than this.

Last question: I'm assuming for portrait shots I am safe to use ISO 100 and a longer exposure. I'll probably just use auto mode for this as the camera gets passed around etc.

Thank you very much for the advice.
Click to expand...



Hi, yeh you are right about the exposure :) I would also say make sure you shoot in RAW if you have the space to as it will give you some le-way with varying condition etc.

If you want to freeze action I would aim for at least 1/500 with those settings, if its too slow just wack up the ISO a little bit :)

For portraits I would tend to not go below the length of the lens (for example if you are shooting with at 100mm on a 1.6 crop camera I would aim for at least 1/150th due to being handheld etc)

For the camera just being passed around I would just leave it on aperture, but set a smaller aperture (2.8) and a higher iso (800), if you leave it on Auto the flash will probably go off which won't really give the best picture.. Let us know how you get on and post up results :D
 
scott212 said:
Excellent, cheers guys as I've said before on here I'm fairly new to photography.

When you say 2/3 of a stop on the camera exposure compensation it has something like this:

-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4

I take it they are referring to the 'stops' each one has several dots in between
Click to expand...

Yes, there is usually a couple of dots inbetween representing 1/2 and 2/3
 
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