Shadows in snow

[Mats_A]

Hi all,
we have had a beatiful winter here in Finland the last weeks. 60 cm of snow and blistering sunshine.

I have been taking some backlighted scenes with sun shining on the snow behind trees. I visualized a bands of shadows and highlights on the snow.

Just back from the darkroom I have a question for the mighty blog brain. The highlights look very nice on the print. Also the darker shades (trees). But the shadows on the snow are a uniform grey. Is the right approach to try a harder paper or did I make a mistake when I developed the film in -20% time. I have found before that this works best.

Film HP5+. Developer ID-11 1:3 solution.

regards

[Rick A]

I would need to see the prints to know what they look like. It really depends on what your original vision was, and how the finished product looks. When you say uniform gray, are they too light for you? Only you know what you want them to look like, so try a harder contrast, or just add a little time, or burn in.

Rick

[Mats_A]

I would need to see the prints to know what they look like. It really depends on what your original vision was, and how the finished product looks. When you say uniform gray, are they too light for you? Only you know what you want them to look like, so try a harder contrast, or just add a little time, or burn in.

Rick

They look like a grey card. The highlights look like I visualized them and also the trees. But the shadows on the snow lack texture. Maybe I will try a harder filter. Would not like to add time as the snow is white and nice now.

r

[brian steinberger]

shimoda, shadows in snow can be tricky. If you had a spot meter and read the scene at the time of shooting you would probably have seen that these shadows actually fell on zone V or IV. There's just so much reflected light in bright snowy conditions that it fills the shadows in. I also think the color of the shadows is deceiving to our eyes because the shadows in show are mostly blue and the contrast between them and the white of the snow in bright sun fools us into thinking they should fall farther apart on the tonal scale. Also, most modern films are more sensitive to blue light, so therefor the shadows are rendered even lighter on film.

My suggestion, try a yellow or orange filter. It will darken the blue shadows and can also add more drama to a bluish sky.

[Mats_A]

shimoda, shadows in snow can be tricky. If you had a spot meter and read the scene at the time of shooting you would probably have seen that these shadows actually fell on zone V or IV. There's just so much reflected light in bright snowy conditions that it fills the shadows in. I also think the color of the shadows is deceiving to our eyes because the shadows in show are mostly blue and the contrast between them and the white of the snow in bright sun fools us into thinking they should fall farther apart on the tonal scale. Also, most modern films are more sensitive to blue light, so therefor the shadows are rendered even lighter on film.

My suggestion, try a yellow or orange filter. It will darken the blue shadows and can also add more drama to a bluish sky.

This makes sense to me. On the print they look middle grey which would be Zone V (as I understand the Zone system). I do not have a spot meter. I used my DSLR as a meter before the shot. This would explain why the snow (highlights) and the trees look really ok but the snow (shadows) lacks structure.

I will try with a yellow filter next time.

Thanks

r

[jp498]

I've had good luck using an incident light meter for shooting snow. Barring that, bracket some shots.

[Nicholas Lindan]

You may want to try a different paper. Some VC papers have a dip in local gamma - contrast - in the light greys. Since there isn't much contrast in snow shadows to begin with any drop in contrast will be keenly felt. Using a non-VC paper may give quite different results.

The Darkroom Automation web site support files section has a paper on local gamma, with special emphasis on the problems of VC papers:
http://www.darkroomautomation.com/su...vcworkings.pdf - see the graph at the bottom of page 7 (last page).

[Mats_A]

I've had good luck using an incident light meter for shooting snow. Barring that, bracket some shots.

I would not like to use an incident meter in this case since that would require me to walk on the snow to measure it. It was unbroken and lovely. A spot meter I will get me one day (said Yoda).

I will try to make a scan of the print and post it.

For the moment I will have to make do with my trusty Seagull and Nikon as meter. My Rolleicord should be back from repair next week.

r

[Mats_A]

I will also try with a harder filter. Am still trying to (re)learn this printing business so I would like to keep the variables to a minimum at the moment.

r

[CPorter]

Shadows in the snow on a sunny day that are mid-toned is not necessarily a bad thing. Snow can be tricky to expose for and subsequently print. If you like the work of AA, look at a lot of his snow scenes on sunny days, you'll see that the print values in the snow shadows and the snow highlights are fairly close together. If those values get too far apart on the paper, you risk a chalky, lifeless snow scene with excessive contrast.