Gore Mountain, NY: 12/23/12

Ski Day 5: I really didn't get squat for pictures today, and for some reason all the shots I took in the blizzard on Uncas were completely washed out. Time to go back to the manual I suppose.

The Gondi went green at 7:50 and the corduroy was just incredible.  The new snow that fell yesterday and last night groomed up fantastically on everything on the East Side.


The wind was ripping on top of Bear Mtn

Once again the mountain was loaded with kindred spirits.  I knew I had to take off at noon or so to be home, and I was hopping to get a shot at Uncas before I left.

Patrol dropped the rope on Uncas at 11am and it was off the charts fun.  The snow was a little wet, and the last two guns were borderline gak, but if you were ready for it, it was 100% manageable.

The only semi-decent pic I got of Uncas was from the Topridge lift.



The weekend was really, really fun. I have more pics from yesterday, will post those asap.

What mode do you use for shooting pictures? For years I used Auto mode and got crap. Program (P) is much better, especially with the ability to manually adjust the white balance (your new Canon should be able to do that). Auto just does a horrible job with snow conditions and so do special "snow modes" because they assume all snow conditions are the same, which they are not. If you get crap, you should be able to shot in RAW with that new Canon as well... you can often times salvage a crap JPG by working the RAW file, if you want to invest some time in learning how to do that.

I normally use "P"  - LOL I thought that was auto.

Somehow I changed something overnight. Every picture was taking several seconds to save and I was getting a "BUSY" message. I'm not sure what I changed.

It may have had something to do with trying the burst mode. Not sure.

I want to get to Gore this season SO BAD! That last picture is beautiful!

Your last shot looks kinda familiar.

Sometimes cameras will have trouble setting exposure properly with all the white snow. You can also see if the camera has an exposure bracketing setting. Then the camera will take three photos when you press the shutter. One with the exposure it thinks is right, one over exposed and one under exposed. I used that setting to take pics in a cave without a flash and it worked pretty well.

+1 on conditions this weekend.

Tom

riverc0il wrote

 Auto just does a horrible job with snow conditions and so do special "snow modes" because they assume all snow conditions are the same, which they are not. If you get crap, you should be able to shot in RAW with that new Canon as well... you can often times salvage a crap JPG by working the RAW file, if you want to invest some time in learning how to do that.

A camera's internal meter takes all the color values of the scene, averages them, and assumes that it will be a 15% gray (exactly between black and white). Shooting an all light-toned scene (beach, snow), it will set the exposure such that the snow and sand should be gray. Beach/Snow mode is an exposure compensation  to make it a stop brighter than the camera wants it to be.

Basically, if it's bright/lots of snow, try to look for an exposure compensation setting and put it at +1 (or play with it until you get good results).

Shooting in RAW is awesome for editing in post, but the file is 5x bigger than a JPEG.

I had probably 50 shots that came out like this... some had no image at all. Granted it was in snowmaking, but I've taken pics in snowmaking before and gotten reasonable results.



I must have done something with a setting to get this. (?)

Harv,

I had a day were all my pictures were whiteouts like those. I have a Canon S100 And while it generally takes excellent photos, sometimes it gets a bit fidgety. It's relatively easy to mistakingly change a menu setting. Especially when it's freezing out and you want to get your hand back in the glove as soon as possible.

I'd recommend that you go into the main menu and restore the camera to its default settings.  I did that and all the whiteouts went away.  P, Is the program mode and allows you to alter more settings then the auto green mode.  It's likely that while in the P mode you hit the function button and inadvertently changed a setting.  

Another thing to consider is Your focus setting.  Many of these cameras do face detection, evaluative, And spot focusing. The exposure is then tied into the focusing Mode you chose. This can lead to unexpected results.  Hope you fix it soon. Poindexter and I look forward to your trip reports and they wouldn't be the same without the Excellent photography!

CMO - That sounds like exactly what happened.

When I hit the function button the message is a little confusing.

Default Control ISO
Turn Ring to Adjust the Shooting Mode Setting:

STD   ISO   +/-    MF  WB+/-  ZOOM etc

I assume STD is the way to go?

Now that you mention it, that ring around the lens housing probably was the culprit.  I'd recommend that you set it to something innocuous like zoom.  That way you would see that you inadvertently rotated it and changed the composition of the image, not the WB or ISO or something that would screw up the outcome.  I'm not sure what standard is, but I believe it affects zoom.  

Good luck!

That shot looks over exposed but I could be wrong.

Um you probably have about 4-5 presets of WB besides auto WB which sucks. Then you can for snow conditions and various cloud/no cloud senerios create your own WB settings.

Go to you tube they have great tutorials on this subject.

I shoot Nikon but so it may vary slightly.

I think I figured it out today. Its the ISO setting that causes the problem.

What is ISO?

I think of ISO as sensitivity. The three things that control exposure are shutter speed (how fast the shutter goes), Aperture (how wide open the lens is), and ISO (sensitivity). It all has to do with how much light you're letting in (longer shutter times and wide open lenses - low f-stop numbers - let in the most light). If sensitivity is high (ISOs of 800, 1600, or 3200), you're letting in a ton of light. I usually only crank sensitivity that high if I'm shooting at night, or if I'm in deep woods. Otherwise, it's around 200-400.

I think that's how it works anyway (I'm no expert).

mattchuck2 wrote

I think that's how it works anyway (I'm no expert).

Perfect description.  I checked it out.  Cranked the IS0 to the max (6400?) and took a picture in the dark...



So on snow either use the lowest setting (32?) or set on Auto?

I always use auto ISO unless I am trying to do something very specific, usually in doors without a flash or something like that. You shouldn't automatically use the lowest ISO setting, either. Just put it on auto and forget about it.

Glad you figured that out! I was wondering if you were doing something weird in post. Your photos, even with your old camera, lacked any kind of sharp crispness to them. I suspect you crop too much and that doesn't help either, better to get closer without using zoom than zoom to the max and then crop it extensively.

Having the ISO at 6400 would definitely cause major problems. High ISO is pretty much a joke, IMO, kinda like the mega pixels wars... having a higher max ISO gives you a better spec than a competitor even if it is useless.

The term ISO is a holdover from the old days of film photography.  ISO = film speed.  A higher ISO number means increased light sensitivity, but at the expense of sharpness.  The old standard was 100 speed film for outdoor photography, 400 for indoors, 1600 for way low light.  In digital photography, higher ISO will give you increasingly pixelated images.  

But forget all that, as RiverCoil said, just use the Auto ISO setting.

I'm no expert, but from what ive read an amateur should only play with the iso setting with low light. In general you want the lowest iso. High iso increases sensitivity but also noise, so if there is plenty of light you don't want high iso. Also if you are trying to catch a high speed action shot and need a fast shutter, you may need a high iso. Auto iso generally works ok.

If you were getting better exposure before the going back to the defaults as recommended by another would be a good suggestion. I've found that some changes carry over from one mode to another and some do not. So going from and to P mode can have more of an impact than you would think.

Tom