DIGITAL SLR ESSENTIALS

Northern exposures

Set up your Canon camera for cold-weather photography

Winter offers arguably the best light for outdoor photography, in the Northern Hemisphere at least – from cloudy-bright days for portraits to vibrant sunsets that bring the landscape to life. Last issue, PhotoPlus brought you a guide to making the most of winter wildlife, and in this month’s Digital SLR Essentials, we’re looking at how to keep your camera working – and delivering the best results – in the cold.

Faced with snow, fog and pale skies, your EOS may shoot grey-looking images. This is because the camera sees that winter scene as a mid-tone with too much light, so reduces the exposure.

Using exposure comp will bring back the brightness, although this can result in some to-ing and fro-ing when Evaluative is set as the metering mode. With Evaluative, the camera meters the whole frame and takes in to account various aspects – like size and location of the ‘subject’, before calculating the exposure. This means the exposure can change, depending on what’s in-frame.

When you use an EOS mirrorless camera with an electronic viewfinder (EVF), or a Canon DSLR set to Live View, you can use the live histogram to judge the exposure more accurately.