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

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.

Might end up doing a timelapse with the E-PL6 too.

what about setting his on-camera flash to lowest power to activate the slave to take the shot?

Fri13 wrote:

camera not to overexpose the close flakes.

Some sort of shelter to eliminate the really close flakes.

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

You do not indicate exactly what you want to capture.  If it is a blizzard, snow will be failing at a very high rate, there will not be a lot of light, and backgrounds will quickly become covered with snow, so you do not see the snow flakes.  You probably want to pick some location with a darker background ( like an evergreen tree).  If you include a lot of distance, then it will become a white spotted image with a relatively fast shutter speed.  See the attached taken at the beginning of the last "blizzard" in northern NJ.  However, I was simply trying to see how many cardinals I could include in the image.

Besides the E-PL6 for time lapse, you don't mention what body and lens you plan to use.  I assume you have weather sealed gear for this purpose.

As others have mentioned, a flash is needed to freeze and see the individual snow flakes.

Daytime is not a problem for flash sync speeds as it will undoubtedly be overcast when snowing.

I used the E-M5m2 with Panasonic 12-35 last year along with both the small accessory flash that came with the camera and the FL-600R.

My recollection is that I had to dial down the flash intensity on most occasions as it was too bright otherwise. Pointing the flash up a bit reduced the intensity in a nice way but leaves the bottom part of the image (if shooting in landscape orientation) without flash. This can still look good.

Here's a shot from Sunday when we had a light dusting of snow in New York.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/52836039@N02/24389508141/in/dateposted/

I used the small accessory flash and pointed the flash up about 45 degrees. Much of the bottom of the image has been cropped out, but I like that the ground isn't filled with snow flakes.

I tried wireless off camera flash last year with the FL-600R, but it was difficult because it is triggered by line of sight. It was hard to hold the camera in one hand and the flash in the other hand in a position that's in the line of sight of the on camera flash.

Michael

This is where I usually push the red dot button and stop down.  Yes, I'm a vidiot.

I'm going to suggest an off-camera hot shoe flash extension cord instead of doing the wireless slave, as an option.  Might be easier than trying to position multiple flashes.

I'd wrap some plastic over everything before going out into the blizzard with non-weather-sealed gear and then blot everything really well with paper towels after coming back inside, and wait to turn on and use until everything is well dry and room temperature.

K25 wrote:

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!

This is the snow photo I took yesterday while arriving home after vacations: 1/30", but snow was falling slowly

... and just for information: a few hours earlier at Medano (Tenerife). Sigh...

Talk about a high dynamic range  I wonder what you would get if you combined the two photos (in a creative way so you could see details of both.)

drj3 wrote:

You do not indicate exactly what you want to capture. If it is a blizzard, snow will be failing at a very high rate, there will not be a lot of light, and backgrounds will quickly become covered with snow, so you do not see the snow flakes. You probably want to pick some location with a darker background ( like an evergreen tree). If you include a lot of distance, then it will become a white spotted image with a relatively fast shutter speed. See the attached taken at the beginning of the last "blizzard" in northern NJ. However, I was simply trying to see how many cardinals I could include in the image.

Thanks I love this shot!  I want to capture individual snowflakes against a background of evergreen trees, which gives the image the nice contrast it needs.  But the snow is falling at 3 inches per hour (it's actually happening right now.)  16 inches down, maybe another foot plus to go!

OrdinarilyInordinate wrote:

I'm going to suggest an off-camera hot shoe flash extension cord instead of doing the wireless slave, as an option. Might be easier than trying to position multiple flashes.

I'd wrap some plastic over everything before going out into the blizzard with non-weather-sealed gear and then blot everything really well with paper towels after coming back inside, and wait to turn on and use until everything is well dry and room temperature.

Thanks I'm using the E-PL6 and an E-M5 (original version) I just procured.