Use Exposure Compensation To Get True Whites in Your Chicago Winter Photographs!

Hey Chicago! Are you getting out there in this winter wonderland to photograph this snowy season?

I hope so! However, you might be running into an issue when taking pictures in the snow. Do you feel like they are dull and dark? Wonder what went wrong? 

Cameras are loaded with technology and they want to help us out by determining accurate exposure for a scene.  Inside our cameras is a light meter. This meter helps you or the camera (depending on what mode you shoot in) determine how much light is needed to get a properly exposed image.  Your Camera always wants to get an average exposure, so it will expose for “middle grey”. This is the tone that is halfway between true black and true white. Sometimes the camera’s light meter gets fooled.  For example, the gorgeous winter scene you want to capture, ends up looking dull and grey. Your camera’s meter is trying to figure out what is important in the scene. So when it sees all that bright snow, the meter is indicating there is too much light. It is too bright, so it underexposes the image to get back to middle grey. This results in dull, dark, grey looking snow. 

There is a way to fix this issue!  We can override our camera, by using “Exposure Compensation”. 

Next time you are outside in the snow, try and increase the exposure compensation between [+1 - +2]. By doing this, you are telling the camera to increase your exposure and brighten the image, therefore capturing the true tones of white in the scene.  Check out the following images that show the difference between [0, +1 and +2]

Left Image is [0], Middle Image [+1], Right Image [+2]. For me a point between +1 and +2 would be perfect.

So where do you find this function on your camera? Every camera is a bit different, so the best way to locate your exposure compensation is to refer to your camera’s manual. If you can’t find the manual, a quick search on the internet should allow you to download the appropriate PDF.

Here are a couple of images showing where it is on some of my cameras

(LEFT: My Canon 5D Mark III Look to your menu settings in your camera. You can see I have the flexibility of adding +3 Stops of light or subtracting -3 Stops of light. MIDDLE: Canon Rebel - Push the AV+/- button to access the meter outlined in red. Then use dial to ADD or SUB your light. RIGHT: Panasonic LX100 - just move the dial on circled in red to ADD or SUB light and maintain your current camera settings.

Also, check out quick video to show you where to locate exposure compensation function on canon.