Taking snow pics with mavic 2 zoom

[MavBoka]

I was wondering if someone knows the best strings and filter for taking snow pictures.. I live in southern Illinois and some winters we don’t get snow and some we do it’s gone in 3 days so I don’t get a lot of practice and so far they’re too dark or too light.. thanks in advance

 

[Meta4]

I was wondering if someone knows the best strings and filter for taking snow pictures.. I live in southern Illinois and some winters we don’t get snow and some we do it’s gone in 3 days so I don’t get a lot of practice and so far they’re too dark or too light.. thanks in advance

If you are shooting stills, there's no need for any filters.

There's nothing special about snow.
All you have to do is get the exposure setting right.
The camera's metering should be able to handle snow or anything else.
You may get problems if you compose bright snow together with darker areas.
The metering will try to give an exposure that's right for the average of the scene but leaves the brighter parts over exposed or the darker areas underexposed.

How about posting an example or two?

 

[MavBoka]

 

[MavBoka]

This is the only snow I have shot.. with the mavic 2 zoom..it was gone the next day.. I was about 180’ up when I shot it, all I shot that day looks like this one... I shot some with the p4p I had it they turned out better.. I don’t get a lot of practice but will the exposure.. thanks

 

[Meta4]

This is the only snow I have shot.. with the mavic 2 zoom..it was gone the next day.. I was about 180’ up when I shot it, all I shot that day looks like this one... I shot some with the p4p I had it they turned out better.. I don’t get a lot of practice but will the exposure.. thanks

That's not too bad, it's not burnt out and you can play with it in Photoshop to bring out more, like this quick attempt.
Maybe a -1/3 stop exposure compensation would have had it looking like that too.

 

[MavBoka]

Thanks for the help, as I said since I usually have little time with snow I hated to waste it

 

[MavBoka]

Looks good!, thanks again

 

[jwt873]

With snow, all the white in the scene overwhelms the auto exposure function and quite often the snow is left underexposed and turns out grey. It gets worse on cloudy days. You need to use the histogram in order to get the exposure correct.

The histogram shows the exposure info. The left side of the histogram is the black area of your image and the right side is the white portion. Everything in between represents shades of grey from black on the left to white on the right.

If the scene is all white, you need to get the exposure info moved towards the right side of the histogram so it just touches. Don't go too far past the right corner or you'll be overexposed.

You move the histogram over using the EV control. +EV moves right and -EV moves left. I took the two shots below back to back. Notice in the first shot, the EV was 0. The histogram 'hump' shows everything is in the grey area and as a result, the snow is dark. In the next shot, I added an EV of +1. Notice that the snow is whiter and the histogram 'hump' is where it should be for a white snowy scene.

 

[MavBoka]

Thanks for the help

 

[terradriller]

How do you move the histogram to the bottom. Mine is at the top covering the EV settings.
Also thanks for the quick explanation of the histogram, I too love in Southern Illinois and as the OP said our snow is very limited.
Happy Flying

 

[jwt873]

I'm not sure how to move the histogram on all devices, but on my iPad, I just place my finger on it and drag it to wherever I want it to be.

 

[abtocmeptb]

Start watching from 4:15

 

[SeanOzz]

I live in snow for about 8 months of the year.

I’ll try and go out and check my settings over the weekend. I change them all the time. White balance is one of the more important ones in snow.