IN SNOWY CONDITIONS
Ensure correct exposure when shooting birds against a white backdrop
1
HOME WORK
perfecting techniques at home will save time in the hide. i made a simple setup in my garden using a red apple against a white door to replicate a winter scene. i used isO 100 and a wide aperture of f3.5 to blur out the door.
2
EVALUATIVE METERING
My camera was set to aperture mode and i started by using evaluative metering, which reads light from the whole frame. The white background fools the camera and the resulting image is too dark. shutter speed 1/1,600sec.
3
SWITCH TO SPOT METERING
next i used spot metering, which reads light from a specific area, and set the point over the apple. This produced a more pleasing image, but as you can see, now it is too light. shutter speed 1/400sec.
4
HISTOGRAM
using a histogram is a great way to check the brightness of an image. Looking at the second shot in photoshop the histogram clearly shows that the highlights are clipped, causing a loss of detail in the white door.
5
USE EXPOSURE COMPENSATION
For the final shot i changed back to evaluative metering but set +1 eV of exposure compensation. This has created a much brighter image whilst maintaining a little tone in the highlights.