When the temperature drops and the snow starts to fall, it means that winter is coming. Even though the winter is very cold, it is undeniable that winter is a very beautiful and amazing season. Cold is not an excuse, it's time to take your camera to record the beauty of winter nature. Although winter photography may be a challenge, as long as you master the skills, you can easily capture the beauty of winter.
Here are some tips for camera setting during winter photography.
Camera Preparation Winter also brings a series of challenges for your camera. Before you set off, make sure your camera is ready for cold weather. The camera essentials include a UV filter to protect the lens, and an extra rain cover to protect your camera. Bring a lens cleaning cloth to keep the lens humidity. Of course, a camera strap is an important precaution to prevent the camera from slipping out of your hands. Ensure that the battery is fully charged (including spare batteries).
Filter and Polarizer Filter and polarizer are very important for winter photography, helpful to take more vivid pictures. The filter can absorb short-wave light such as blue and purple, and help to reduce the brightness and adjust the color when shooting, so that the captured picture is more natural and full, and it also protects the lens to a certain extent. Polarizer is indispensable just like filter. The polarizer can eliminate or weaken the light spot, the strong reflection of the non-metallic surface, etc., so that the scene we shoot is more layered, and the saturation of the color will be greatly increased, so the effect is better.
Exposure Setting Most people rely on the built-in function of the digital camera for automatic exposure, but if we want to shoot more vivid winter scenes, we have to manually set the exposure. The most typical is the shooting of snow scenes. We all know that snow will reflect a lot of sunlight, which will also cause underexposure. Simply relying on the camera's automatic exposure sensor, the quality of the photos taken is very unsatisfactory. Therefore, we need to manually increase the exposure compensation to achieve a good exposure effect. Generally speaking, multi-area metering shooting only needs to increase the 0.5EV exposure compensation to achieve good results, and our commonly used center-weighted average metering shooting method, it is better to increase the exposure compensation to 1.5EV.
White Balance Adjustment The CCD sensor of many digital cameras does not have an adaptive function, and the camera's self-sensing white balance is very different from the actual picture. In order to make the photo color and imaging effect perfect, we should manually adjust the white balance of the camera according to different situations. However, not all scenes can achieve good visual effects by changing the white balance. For scenes such as rime that are tightly wrapped by snow crystals, we can’t achieve good shooting results simply by adjusting the white balance of the camera. We can use the technique of backlit shooting, which will make the shooting scene more layering and saturation.
Shutter Speed Shoot with different shutter speeds can create some interesting effects in winter photography. You can use a tripod and slow shutter speed (eg 1/15) to create all kinds of awesome photos. This is suitable for blurring the tap water or creating a streak effect when it is snowing. Of course, if you want take a photo that the wind blows the trees or snowflakes, you need to use a faster shutter speed.
Consider Your Composition Composition is also particularly important in winter photography. A white background can help create a clean and eye-catching photo. You can merge the white background into the photo, or zoom in to get a closer and clearer photo. In addition, add some color to the photo, or look for a colorful subject that contrasts with the white background to add some life to winter photos. Winter scenery is not only snow, but also many other scenes of different colors. Therefore, we need to adjust the exposure according to the main color of the main scene. Reduce exposure when shooting red-dominated scenes in order to make the photos more vivid; Ensure the intensity of exposure when shooting green-dominated scenes, otherwise the picture will lose the vitality of life. As for yellow-dominated scenes, increasing the exposure will make the picture brighter. When dealing with black, white, and gray colors, we just need to adjust them randomly based on our feelings.
Doing the camera settings well can make your winter photography smoother and capture better scenery. But taking pictures of portraits outdoors in winter is not an easy task. The cold weather is a great challenge. Therefore, the photography backdrop is a good choice, allowing you to take winter-themed photos indoors. The winter backdrops create very realistic scenes, making you feel as if you are in a winter wonderland, so that you can take adorable photos with winter without going outdoors.
