We're getting hit with another blizzard here in New Brunswick tonight. Expected accumulation of the white stuff is 35 centimeters (14 inches for our American friends) but we're well on our way to beating that prediction. The streets are almost impassable and walking the dog has become hazardous: the combined snow from this and previous snowfalls is easily higher than Marlee's head. It's the kind of night when she trudges through the shoulder-high snow for a couple of steps, then turns to you and makes a face that says, "Are you kidding me?"
I thought the combination of nightfall and snowfall would give me a chance to play with the manual settings on the Olympus without even having to step foot outside again. I put the camera on top of a jar on the windowsill in our kitchen, pointed at the backyard. I then set the shutter to stay open for 15 seconds and tried a bunch of pictures at different aperture settings, placing no trust in the internal light meter as I worked. The meter told me the top photo was just slightly under-exposed and the other two were strongly over-exposed (if you can believe it!).
All three pictures tend toward a sepia-toned black-and-white feeling, due to the lack of light and monochromatic colour scheme in the frame. The top photo (f8 at 15 seconds) is my favourite. Its shades are deep and soft and the snow itself has a texture to it. The middle photograph (f6.2) is still nice, with more details coming through on the trees thanks to the extra light but the snow is starting to bleed out. I find the lowest photo seems like it was taken in daylight almost, which is interesting in a way, but the image itself loses something as a result. Look at the snow in the last picture: it's almost completely lacking in detail.
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