Sometimes the old rules just work

One of the most challenging scenes for many photographers is a snow scene. Using our digital cameras and the built-in light meter snow photographs are often slightly underexposed causing the snow to look gray. Yesterday, I did a bit of an experiment. Not overly scientific just a quick test so to speak. I let the camera’s built-in light meter show me what it thought to be a correct exposure, that is not over or under-exposed.

As you can see the snow is well somewhat gray and the image is slightly underexposed.

Here I metered the scene with a Gossen light meter using reflective light. The light meter measured what would actually fit the sunny 16 rule. As you see, the snow is much more white.

Using incident light with the Gossen light meter the scene was measured and shot as shown below.

This just goes to show you that some of the old rules are still working today. This post was brought you by the sunny 16 rule.