Best settings to capture "snow in flight" during Blizzard?

alexisgreat wrote:

So we have a Blizzard Watch up in Long Island for Saturday for up to 2 feet of snow and I was wondering what's the best way to capture snowflakes in flight when snow is falling at a very fast rate? We could have up to 4 inches per hour! In the past when I tried this, I would get disappointed and only see all the flakes blend into a white blur. I want to have a fast enough shutter speed to capture individual flakes as they fall and yet have the whole scene bright enough to see the background too. The good thing is the heaviest snow will be falling in the afternoon which is pretty rare- most of our snowstorms have the heaviest snow at night, so this will be during the brightest part of the day, great for photography!

I'm going to use spot metering, but am wondering how much exposure compensation I should use as well as the shutter speed and ISO. I am going to use shutter priority mode and the aperture will be at the maximum.

We - in the UK - don't often have the really heavy stuff that you get, and I would advise against using flash on camera - back lighting is always best for snow. At night the street lights can help.

Choose shutter speed to get slight motion - otherwise it all blurs together, and with the right (back-) lighting choose a focus point that gets some of the nearer stuff in focus. A couple of night shots to illustrate:-

https://www.flickr.com/photos/watchman/8420044289/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/watchman/8418318424/

Best of luck! (And remember don't take a cold camera back indoors without a protective bag round it, so you don't get condensation inside the gear.)

Mike