PC World's Digital Focus: Winter Photos, Digital Video for Newbies

Snow scenes, cold-weather caveats, other tricks of the trade.

Dave Johnson

Feature: Photographing Old Man Winter

Winter is a beautiful time of year to head outside with your digital camera. Even if you grumble at the thought of driving in snow, you've got to recognize the beauty of a snowy mountain scene or the appeal of capturing frost on your garden flowers first thing in the morning.

Prepare for the Cold

Unfortunately, winter conditions can make for challenging photography. For starters, make sure you're warm enough to survive outside for an hour or two. Dress in layers, wear a hat, and be sure you have the right footwear to trudge through ice, snow, and slush. Most importantly, bring gloves. I wear thin gloves--they protect me from the wind, but still allow me to work the tiny buttons on my camera. If your gloves are too thick, you'll have to take them off to take pictures, and that defeats the purpose of having gloves to begin with.

Your camera needs cold relief as well. When you first take the camera outside, the optics will probably fog up. Never, ever, wipe the moisture off the lens! Give the camera a few minutes to adjust to the cold and the fog will lift naturally. If you wipe it, you'll possibly scratch the lens, undoubtedly wind up with smears, and in general, make a real mess

Because they're electronic devices, digital cameras don't function as well in cold conditions as in the heat of summer. Indeed, some digital cameras have a harder time in the cold than SLR cameras, because they're not built as ruggedly. Nonetheless, you can prevent most unexpected failures by keeping the batteries warm. If the batteries get too cold, they'll simply stop working. That's why I always carry a spare set in my warmest pocket, where my body heat keeps them warm. If the current in the first set of batteries drops off due to the cold, I swap them out with the ones warmed by my body and continue shooting. Since the first set of batteries will recover when warmed by your body, you can swap back and forth a few times--unless you're shooting in the Arctic where the ambient temperature is 50 below.

Compensate for the Snow

Your camera is not calibrated to photograph lots of pure white--snow tends to confuse the camera's exposure meter and underexpose the shot. You can handle this quandary either manually or automatically, depending on what kind of camera you own.

If your camera has a "Sand and Snow" programmed exposure mode, shoot with it whenever your scenes are predominately snow. If you lack such an adjustment, just overexpose the photograph. Set the camera's EV (exposure value) dial to +1, which will overexpose the picture by one "stop." That should accommodate most normal winter situations. As always, I suggest that you review your pictures after you take them and re-shoot them with a slightly different exposure if you need to. This capability is one of the biggest perks of having a digital camera--so take advantage of it!

Shooting Suggestions

Trapped in suburbia, I don't typically have access to breathtaking natural wintertime vistas. But each and every winter, I find some great subjects to shoot. Try some of these on for size:

• Flowers and trees after a frost. You can use a close-up lens to capture the crystalline structure of the ice on leaves, pine needles, and flower petals.
• Frozen water. If there's a waterfall nearby, you're in luck. But if not, try the fountain at the city park or icicles hanging from your roof.
• People doing wintery things. There's skiing, skating, sledding, and snowball fights. Or catch some kids making a snowman.

Dave's Favorites: Print Image Matching

Did you know that there's more color information in most digital photographs than your computer is typically able to deal with? Computers work with a somewhat more abbreviated range of colors--sometimes called color space--than what the human eye and your digital camera are capable of seeing. The range is even more limited than what most desktop printers can generate on the printed page. So when camera images are transferred to your computer, they lose some of their potential. That's why Epson created the Print Image Matching specification. About a dozen camera, printer, and software vendors have climbed on board so far.

Products that support Print Image Matching optimize certain characteristics of your photos for printing. They tweak the gamma level, color range, brightness, sharpness, saturation, and color balance--preserving color and detail information that's typically lost because the PC wasn't designed to be a photographic tool. I've tested Print Image Matching extensively using compatible cameras and printers, and placed the prints side by side with images that have been stripped of their extra Print Image Matching color information. The bottom line? In a lot of cases, there's a dramatic difference between the two.

But this isn't always the case. I have found some pictures in which the difference was minimal or barely detectable. And without the Print Image Matching-enhanced image to reference, ordinary photos usually look fine to most people. If that sounds like a tepid endorsement, it's only because I sometimes get carried away in my quest for better technology. I love DVD Audio, for instance, but I know there a lot of people who think regular CDs sound just fine.

This much is true: If you're shopping for a new camera or a new printer in the near future, I suggest you keep an eye out for the Print Image Matching logo. Getting a new camera without it would be like buying a new home theater without Dolby Digital. The incremental difference may not be enough to make you run out and replace your gear today, but it'll be there waiting for you when upgrade time finally arrives.

Q&A: Getting Started in Digital Video

I was wondering what you would recommend to get started with editing digital video. I already have Photoshop and a good scanner, but I was wondering what kind of video card and software you would recommend for the home hobbyist.

--Tim Odell, San Diego, California

The nice thing about digital video--as opposed to old, PC-based analog video editing--is that the hardware is largely standardized. You don't have to worry about matching a particular kind of video capture card to specific software, and captured video quality is identical no matter which video card you get. That's possible because digital camcorders all use IEEE 1394 connectors (also called FireWire and iLink) to transfer data from the camera to the PC.

The bottom line is that you should be able to walk into a computer store and purchase pretty much any IEEE 1394 adapter card for your PC and use it to transfer video from your camcorder to your computer's hard disk. You'll need a big hard drive; I personally dedicate an entire 80GB hard disk to the job. Although they cost more money than an internal hard drive, you might want to try one of the new IEEE 1394 external hard disks. It's easier than opening up your computer and figuring out if you have an available drive bay. And if you already have two IDE hard drives installed, you'll still be able to add an IEEE 1394 external model.

Finally, you'll need some software. If you're just getting into video, check out MGI VideoWave. I'm a huge fan--it is easy to use, yet reasonably powerful. Go to our Product Finder for buying information.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $10 and $100.

A gentle reminder, folks: We disqualify some really wonderful pictures every week because the submissions aren't following the rules. In your e-mail message be sure to include everything we ask for, including a description of your picture and your complete contact information, or your entry is wasted!

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels to hotpic@pcworld.com. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regs.

This week's Hot Pic: Playing with Fire, by Pat Harrington, Vallejo, California

This is the second time that Pat has found his way into our Hot Pic of the Week. He says:

"I was experimenting with some indoor close-ups. I set up the matches (I stuck them in some moldy cheese!), focused the camera, and set the exposure at-2EV (which is underexposed by two 'stops). I had several halogen lights (which I bought at Home Depot) that allowed me to have a shutter speed of 1/160 with f/4.5. I set the white balance for 'indoors' and I hung a black t-shirt to make the black background. I then lit the matches and had my Sony DSC 85 set for 3-shot burst mode (mounted on a tripod) and caught the image."

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