Thursday, February 2, 2012

Shooting in the snow at night

Last night we got caught up in the snow here in Podgorica and I thought it was the perfect excuse to get wet and dirty with my Canon 7d. . . I hooked up my 50mm f1.4 lens with a Circular Polarizer to seal it up a bit in the front.
The first challenge was how to set up the camera for shooting in very low light conditions with snow all around. My visions were simple - I wanted to use a fairly slow shutter speed (1/60s) to catch the motion of the particles in the air, while freezing the minimal actions of my subjects. I used 50mm primarily because of the wide aperture (most of the shots were done from f1.4 to f2.8). These settings would suffice if I was to shoot in dusk or dawn, but this late with very little light I had to pump up the ISO to 1000+. This caused some grain action in the photographs but the 7d and Adobe Lightroom both have noise reduction systems. In this conditions - when I don't have an external light source I can control, I make peace with myself that the photos will be used for web only. In conclusion the settings were:
Canon 7d + Canon 50mm f1.4
Manual mode: 
Shutter speed around 1/60s and up to 1/100s; 
Apperture from f1.4 to f2.8; 
ISO 1000-1600.

Take a look!
The slower shutter speed makes the snow look like it's almost raining

While we were taking a break and warming up at Costa's.

Use lights wherever available - The light on their faces is from an advert above them

Props like umbrellas are always welcome!

I love action shots

Try to think in different angles and what they do for the shot
Remember to keep shooting between takes.

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