White Balance

I’ve always found this a little confusing.   I’m a skier so I notice that the colour of snow changes according to the time of day and what kind of light is illuminating it.

For starters the sun on the snow acts as a second light source so I find it easy to get so much glare on the background that it looks like a snow storm.

Some tips I’ve found for cloudy days are to centre weight or spot the camera’s metering and change the EV by -0.7 or -1.0.

On blue sky days I’ve found it even more difficult to expose correctly.  I tend to get this awful blue cast to my images which is apparently due to the cameras inability to accurately determine white in different light conditions.  A clean, even patch of snow can be used to set the custom white balance to white, but beware of shadows as this can throw the picture out in terms of colour cast.

Actually using a white piece of paper when you are in the custom or manual white balance setting also works to get an even white. Just fill the frame with the image and make sure no other elements creep into the shot.  Take the picture. Then you need to go into the custom white balance menu and select the image.

For me it’s a little bit easier because I tend to shoot in RAW all the time so when I’m processing the image later I just play around with the green-magenta to take away any unusual colour casting.