Zooming in as far as you can will also help. How big was the zoom?

Is this something that could be done in PS? Image like this, expose for the
crow, next frame(s) expose for the best detail in the snow then merge one of
each in PS??? I'm guessing.

The best method may be to use an incident light meter, and set the
exposure manually to match. This will ensure the objects are recorded as
they should be. However, in the absence of one of those then yes, a +2
or so exposure compensation would be a good start. My daughter is off
skiing on Friday and I have just been going over this with her!

Whilst I agree with most of the above, I am not convinced fill-in flash
would be ideal. I think more of the light would be reflected back from
the snow than JPS suggests (rather like reflective paint on road signs).
However, until it snows here it may be hard to test that hypothesis...

David

Shoot two pics and composit them? You'd have to work on the crow's
exposure perhaps, but that would give you good detail in the snow as
well.

You have already been given a number of very workable ideas, I'll give you
one more.
Make an exposure reading on an 18% grey card that completely fills the
frame.  Then manually set you camera for that exposure and shoot your crow
in the snow.
Chuck

Thanks for the data. I read about the zone system years and years ago but I
guess I've forgotten it...

Digital cameras have utterly obviated the classical Adams "Zone System"
and its variants:  they were nothing more than the chemical equivalents
of the "levels" or "contrast" controls in PhotoSlop.  You don't even
need a spotmeter anymore, since you already have N million of them in
your camera -- and much smaller spots at that.

For the problem at hand (black objects on a white background):  push
the white stuff up against the right edge of the histogram -- google up
"expose to the right" -- set the camera's contrast to its lowest
setting and click away.  A camera with a raw output facility is
recommended.

Part of the problem is that the D70's meter does not work this way. The
D70 uses the same metering system as its more expensive brothers, the
F5 and D1. This matrix meter uses a 1005 cell CCD that uses four pieces
of information: the overall measure you describe, the differences in
light across the sensor, the selected focus area, and the distance from
the camera.

Now, think about this. The D70 takes the 18% gray card measurement you
describe, but then also samples other objects in the metering area,
which is a circle bounded by the focus area symbols in the viewfinder.
If the crow is in the center, the meter takes the crow into account
when measuring these differences, but if the crow is much off center,
the meter will miss the crow entirely and give a proper exposure for
the snow -- the crow is not averaged in in either case.

The meter then compares this information to some standard image data
stored in the Nikon's memory and decides if the situation is contrasty,
dark on one side, or whatever. Nikon will not tell us exactly what is
in this database but it is fairly easy to guess. If the crow is
included in the meter's algorithm, the meter will decide to expose for
the snow in order to preserve highlights, but will make a slight
adjustment for the crow. The snow will be white, but the crow will be
underexposed. OTOH, if the crow is not in the meter's field of view, it
will simply expose for the snow. The snow will be white, but the crow
will be even more underexposed. In neither case will the snow appear
gray unless there is some weird shadowing going on.

Now, you may wonder why bother with this comparison algorithm if the
result is essentially going to be the same. In most cases, the
comparision algorithm will come up with a significant difference. But
in the crow in a snowbank scenario, where there are only two highly
contrasting colors, Nikon decided to preserve highlights in the light
areas and deliberately underexpose the dark areas, reasoning that in
post processing you can retrieve details from underexposed areas but
you cannot bring back detail from blown out highlights.

So the crows are really not just black holes; they are black holes of
information that you will not be able to see without some post
processing. Nikon has left it up to the photographer to figure out how
to retrieve that information, but this is one of those things that
Nikon Capture (ugh!) does exceptionally well, generally even better
than the shadow/highlight adjustment in Photoshop CS2. The question you
have to ask is whether the cost and quirks of Capture are worth it,
when shadow/highlight works almost as well.

When taking this kind of picture it is almost always better to shoot in
raw format, since it will preserve more of the data in the underexposed
area, but JPG will work very well for most applications. Better is
always the enemy of good enough, eh?

On 16-Dec-05 01:17:40, Rich said

Check the histogram after your first shot, and adjust to optimise the
situation, you may still lose the darkest shadows and the brightest
highlights. If you have a cloudy-bright day, you ought to be able to get a
reasonable result, the snow to some extent will bounce a fair amount of
light on to your feathered friends thus softening things out a bit.

If all else fails, ask the crows - they are very inteligent.  :)

                 All the best,
                       Angus Manwaring.       (for e-mail remove ANTISPEM)

I need your memories for the Amiga Games Database: A collection of Amiga
Game reviews by Amiga players http://www.angusm.demon.co.uk/AGDB/AGDB.html