Best settings for snow photos at night (In the dark).

Tonight here in northern England it started snowing, I quickly wanted to take a snow shot of snow on a plant on my decking.

I took around 100 shots and this was about the best I got.



Taken on a tripod with my 55-200 lens - 13 seconds F29 ISO 1250. WB (5000K)

It was a rush job, what have I got wrong?

The WB is off. What post processing are you using.


Use spot white balance and click on the snow.

Your scene is illuminated by incandescent light, which is orange. So using camera White Balance setting of Incandescent will help a lot. That is pretty much the idea, match the WB setting to your scenes lighting.

It is not often exact however, so better, if you have software with a white balance tool, just click the white snow, and the tool will take care of it, like this:




I also brightened about 2/3 stop, because predominately white things just simply tend to be undexposed by our meters. Metering 101.

Or Auto WB can do some of the WB correction, maybe about half way, but Auto never is a very satisfactory plan.

nikonpup said:

why did you not use your flash?

Click to expand...

I do not like to use my flash.

The problem that I found was not with WB but a focusing problem.

I was sat in my house on a stool, camera on tripod - with remote attached, very dark outside, plant 14 foot away and I was wanting to get a good shot. The photo above was about the best that I could get. The first few were horrendous and found that if I slowed the shutter down I got a better photo but I had to take a lot to get a reasonable'ish photo.

A lot of the shots were coming out like this.

MAMF said:

The problem that I found was not with WB but a focusing problem.

I was sat in my house on a stool, camera on tripod - with remote attached, very dark outside, plant 14 foot away and I was wanting to get a good shot. The photo above was about the best that I could get. The first few were horrendous and found that if I slowed the shutter down I got a better photo but I had to take a lot to get a reasonable'ish photo.

A lot of the shots were coming out like this.

View attachment 194868

What could/should I have done different?​

Click to expand...

Well first of all there really are no "best settings" for different shooting situations. Rather than apply some "recipe" of settings, you need to understand, thoroughly understand, such things as the basics of exposure, how light metering works, white balance and so forth. Some issues I think you're having with this shot is that with a longer focal length like you're using here, the depth of field gets shallower. To deepen the depth of field, and get everything in focus, you had to close down your aperture, which drove up your ISO or drove down your shutter speed. Most of the time, if not all the time, getting good shots is a juggling act and as photographers we can't hope to simply memorize a series of situational recipe cards that will generate great shots every time based on the situation; Photography simply doesn't work that way.

Since you were inside, I assume you were shooting through a window and that could have made things difficult for your auto-focus.

For focus issues in low light you could try using a flashlight to illuminate the point of focus while focusing then later turn it off. Should work well with BBF.

Another interesting bit of information I found today (page 206 d7100 manual) the AF-assist illuminator:

"The AF-assist illuminator lights when lighting is poor (viewfinder photography
only). AF-assist illumination is only available when both of the following
conditions are met:
1. AF-S is selected for autofocus mode (0 71) or single-servo autofocus is selected
when the camera is in AF-A mode.
2. Auto-area AF is chosen for AF-area mode (0 73), or single-point or dynamic-
area AF is chosen and the center focus point is selected."

So it looks like the assist lamp won't work with BBF set to AF-C.

Also, did you turn the Vibration Reduction off on the lens ?

Thanks for the replies, BTW I had the back door open......was freezing my fingers off after a while.

Needa said:

For focus issues in low light you could try using a flashlight to illuminate the point of focus while focusing then later turn it off. Should work well with BBF.

Another interesting bit of information I found today (page 206 d7100 manual) the AF-assist illuminator:

"The AF-assist illuminator lights when lighting is poor (viewfinder photography
only). AF-assist illumination is only available when both of the following
conditions are met:
1. AF-S is selected for autofocus mode (0 71) or single-servo autofocus is selected
when the camera is in AF-A mode.
2. Auto-area AF is chosen for AF-area mode (0 73), or single-point or dynamic-
area AF is chosen and the center focus point is selected."

So it looks like the assist lamp won't work with BBF set to AF-C.

Click to expand...

I am still learning this camera and learned (In D7100 for dummies) I normally just leave AF on C but I guess that I should have put it on to AF-S.