Taking outdoor winter family photos

Good Morning,
I have a Nikon D5000 with two lenses - the 18-55mm it came with, and a Sigma Pro 70-200mm telephoto.
This weekend I'm doing some family pictures for a friend, outside in the snow. I haven't done outdoor WINTER pictures yet. Can you suggest some settings I should/shouldn't use when taking pictures outside? We live in cold Manitoba, Canada so there will be lots of snow and cold (actually its supposed to be fairly nice this weekend for us which is about -10Celsius).
any suggestions greatly appreciated!
Thank you,
MBGirl

Hi there, from one "manitobanite" to another. It all depends on the lighting conditions. Preferable use a custom white balance setting. If it is a clear bright sunny day, you will get a fair bit of blue sky reflecting on the snow. Another thing to remember is that if there is a lot of snow in the scene the cameras exposure meter will try to actually underexpose the photo. (It doesn't know that it's looking at snow). To compensate for this, you may need to overexpose by 1 or 2 stops. Spot metering on something 18% grey will ensure proper exposure. Also using a polarizing filter will reduce the glare, and will make the sky a nice shade of blue

Thanks John! Funny, I've got a polarizing filter on my Christmas list...will remember to put a star beside it when I send my husband shopping . Good advice, thank you!
Kristin

If you can set your own White Balance then do, but otherwise go for Shady or Haze or Cloudy, one of the highest settings.

Over expose by 1.3 stops as a start but check the histogram as you may have to over expose more or less depending on the specific setting.

A Polarizing filter will be a big help and if the sun is bright then the snow acts as a really good reflector to bounce light back into the shadows.

Don't go under trees or anything that can throw a shadow pattern over the subject; it looks terrible.

Shoot in Raw and you will have the best chance of pulling out some great shots. Go for a High Key effect as you have the perfect situation for it.

Good luck

Most importantly - ENJOY THE EXPERIENCE!!!

Use the beach scene mode and get yourself a copy of Lightroom, then lift up the light tones and darker tones and keep the shadows nice and strong, each picture will be different. As long as the blues from the sky don't reflect you can pull up the vibrancy and for the reds and greens use saturation. To pull out blue reflections use the individual colour controls, select blue and pull down the saturation of it and play with the luminosity. Digital Camera's require digital manipulation and always use raw if possible unless you want to take a load of continuous shots and then its not a good idea due to the buffer in the D5000 which isn't really enough.