The title says it all. First: NO PICTURES (YET)! We live on a summer resort barrier island. Not many people here off season. Snow is not rare here, but the last several years we have had none, or very little. So today we got about 4" to 5". I dislike driving in snow, but I love doing photography in it. This snow storm was one like I have never seen before. Usually during and after the snow the sky over the ocean is grey to almost black. Many of my snow images have a sky from another day (being careful to get the shadows, etc correct). Today after the snow stopped the sky over the ocean was "dynamite". Light blue, layers of dark blue and visible clouds. I made a total of 124 images with my GFX 100S. I had on it the 35~70mm lens with the 20-35mm lens in my pocket. I rarely use a tripod, but today I used my Monopod the whole time, as a walking stick. The 4" to 5" of snow on top of soft sand was treacherous to walk in and the black top parking lot at island's end (overlooks a State Game Preserve) was totally iced over. I suddenly became overly conscious of falling in the snow or ice today, a warning to all seniors which my wife and I have read many times. So, it will take me some time to come up with pictures. I use DXO Photolab 8 to process from RAW to TIF. I do not do any batch processing, I process each "worthy" image ~ (in my opinion) individually . If I seam excited, I am. I turn 89 in February and this is the most fun I have had in a long time. Thanks for reading my joyous story - more to come with images. TIP: My wife of 66 years gave me fur ear muffs, and mittens that have flaps on the ends to quickly take out your fingers, adjust the camera, take a photo, and then put your fingers quickly back in the mittens.
Forgot to mention: After about half of the images were exposed, I continued to notice that the sky in my viewfinder was not only NOT blown out, it was very very dark (in some cases almost black). From my film and darkroom days I used a simplified version of the Zone System. Take a close up reflected light reading from an 18% grey card, and use it for a normal scene, or take a reading from something else (for example snow) and "Place it" on Zone 6 or what ever. My camera meter was trying to make the snow covered landscape 18% GREY! I biased the camera meter to over expose (it ended up that +2/3 stop worked best). All, the images are useable, will probably have to isolate the sky and foreground and optimize them separately. Getting old is not for sissies.
Dave in NJ
Forgot to mention: After about half of the images were exposed, I continued to notice that the sky in my viewfinder was not only NOT blown out, it was very very dark (in some cases almost black). From my film and darkroom days I used a simplified version of the Zone System. Take a close up reflected light reading from an 18% grey card, and use it for a normal scene, or take a reading from something else (for example snow) and "Place it" on Zone 6 or what ever. My camera meter was trying to make the snow covered landscape 18% GREY! I biased the camera meter to over expose (it ended up that +2/3 stop worked best). All, the images are useable, will probably have to isolate the sky and foreground and optimize them separately. Getting old is not for sissies.
Dave in NJ