[Closed] Skiing Photography

Consider bumping exposure compensation up a notch or two. In general a camera will autoexpose for a neutral exposure, whereas with a lot of snow the correct exposure will actually be very bright. The camera doesn't know this, and tries for a neutral exposure - this is why snow heavy pictures can often come out dark making the snow look grey where it's actually bright white.

Ditch the camera and just ski and enjoy yourself.

What he said. For most snowy scenes you are best to over-expose by 1 stop or so. That'll get you white snow, rather than dull grey.

If it has loads of scene settings, you will probably have one for beach/snow. This will do the over-exposure for you.
Try and keep the camera in between shots, as it'll improve battery life.

Bit OTT perhaps, but a polariser might help for emphasising nice blue skies & reducing glare, assuming you can get one for the lens. You'll need a circular polariser & will need to find the filter thread size on your lens. Hoya do some decent ones at a good price.

Actually as a NEX is mirrorless and uses contrast detect autofocus rather than the phase-detect of a DSLR a linear polariser would work fine. Use one ok on my G1 for that reason. But if you're buying new anyhow, get a circular.

Agree with polariser and exposure comments.

Also, get in close! Properly close.

Nothing more boring than holiday snaps of a tiny indistinguishable stick figure on an empty white slope.

Meant to say try to keep the camera [b]WARM[/b] in between shots, as it'll improve battery life.
Only missed out the most relevant word in that sentence!! Doh!!

stumpy01 - Member

Meant to say try to keep the camera WARM in between shots, as it'll improve battery life.

Keep your camera warm, and everytime you take it out you'll get condensation on the lens (and most likely the inside gubbins)

Keep the camera cold, and the battery warm.

The auto HDR feature of the nex5 might be good for snow shots, depending on the level of dynamic range in your image of course. Try it out (you get the standard pic too anyway).

p.s. and ND filter might be useful to if you want to use a large aperture for focus effects in bright light, or want a longer exposure for motion blur.

Keep your camera warm, and everytime you take it out you'll get condensation on the lens (and most likely the inside gubbins)

Theoretically I guess. I meant just tuck it into a jacket, rather than in the depths of the bag to take the edge off. Obviously this might not be practical/safe.
Realistically it won't be kept that much warmer than ambient and I'd be surprised if it caused a genuine issue. Only time I've had a real problem with this is taking my camera from the boot of my car at near zero temps straight into the house.
I was going to suggest just keeping the battery warm, but this isn't exactly practical, unless you remove it when stopped for lunch etc. It doesn't really make quick shots very practical though....

Hey ho.

I believe there is a 'speed priority' mode on the NEX 5 - which gives you 7 shots a second. Burst mode can be very useful for action shots. I do put my battery in a breast pocket when it's really cold.