Andy, Keep in mind that snow is a highly reflective surface. It's virtually a layer of microprisms covering the ground. Blue skies gives you blue tint, especially in the shadows where direct lighting (aka. sunlight) does not override. The low WB is not an "error" as such, but underexposure can certainly make the file harder to work with.
Interstingly, someone recently posted a pic asking for advice on how to make snow look white, and was recommended to _reduce_ his WB colour temp. There's a ditch on both sides of the road... :-) Jostein 2010/12/20 Andrew Allen <[email protected]>: > 1. Many many cameras, including DSLR's, are fooled into making WB (and > exposure) errors when facing a frame full of snow. The typical errors > include underexposure and a very 'cool' WB. > > 2. Shoot in RAW for best results and use your digital preview with > great regularity to ensure quality exposure and a WB 'as close' to > 'correct' as possible; I find AWB with the K-5 (and before it, the > K-7) to have a fairly good success rate with snow - followed by > "Daylight". > > 3. In LR, your ability to process is infinitely increased by shooting > RAW ... the sheer amount of information stored in a 14-bit RAW file > out of the K-5 is amazing. This flexibility is especially evident > when manipulating WB in LR. > > 4. Take your 'ink dropper' tool from the WB section of LR - and point > it at the closest thing you can find to middle grey (A perfect middle > grey will read 50.0 - 50.0 - 50.0 in the RGB figures that change as > you roam around the image with your dropper). Find the closest you > can, click there (thereby telling LR - "This is what grey looks like > dummy!") - and inspect results ... blue snow should be gone for the > most part. If it isn't - continue tweaking by manually sliding your > Blue/Yellow WB slider to the yellow side. Tweak as you need to for > best results. > > 5. If you are still facing some annoying blue tinting after that, use > your color sliders to manually remove saturation from your Blue > channel until you are reasonably satisfied. > > Hope this helps someone as you get your snow shots this year. > -- > Andrew Allen > Freelance Photographer and Writer > www.andrewallenphoto.com > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. > -- http://www.alunfoto.no/galleri/ http://alunfoto.blogspot.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
