Snow landscape

[surfie1]

Hi I am going to Tasmania at the end of June to mid July, I will be trying to shoot sunrises and sunsets with snow, one of the places we will visit is Cradle Mountain, any help on how to shoot in snow would be a great help, also how do you stop your lenses fogging up?

My gear is a Canon 7D, Canon 50mm 1.8, Canon 18-135mm, Sigma 150-500mm and Canon 20-35mm, plus remotes and filters.

Any help would be great.

[mudman]

watch for over exposed areas and adjust your ev value accordingly

[ricktas]

expose for the highlights. Understanding histograms and metering can help in that regard.

Lenses only fog up when you move them from one temp extreme to the other, so say from a hot car to the cold winter chill. So step one is make sure you don't have your car belting the heat out on high. Keep the camera in a bag, take the bag and all out of the the car, then open the bag and removed the camera. You will find the bag insulates the camera to some extent from the heat of the car. Use microfibre cloths to wipe away fogged up lenses, once the lens reaches the ambient temp of the surrounds it will not fog up again, unless you expose it to heat (breathing on it for example). I tend to have more issues with the viewfinder fogging up than the lenses, cause the heat from the body when you stick your face and eye up to the back of the camera is enough to fog the viewfinder.

PS, there is no guarantee you will get snow, just timing and luck

[surfie1]

Thank you mudman and ricktas I will remember what you both said, I know you can't predict snow but just hope the timing is right.

[mongo]

if all else fails, take a few test photos adjusting the EV values until the whites are not blown . Do not worry about the dark areas too much at this stage. Make sure you look at the histogram or the test shots with the viewing screen in shadow. If you are near a patch of normal green grass with the same light on it as the subject you are going to shoot, take a meter reading off the grass only (filling the lens) in manual mode and then adjust your camera settings accordingly. It is very close to metering off a grey card