Seeking advice for shooting snowy landscapes

I have tried many setting on my camera. Here as three examples. What are the recommended setting. Perhaps I NEED an ND filter?
I find the sky to be too washed out and the colors to be bland. The sky is either pale (as shown) or too blue with correction.
I understand the subject is 98% white snow, 1% light blue sky. I want to know if there is a trick to be learned (under expose perhaps)
Same goes for the lack of detail in the snow itself. All shot with a 6D and 24L lens. I have shot at f 4.0 and 8.0 settings in AV mode.
I find a lack of mid-range details and overblown highlights. Thanks in advance.

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Just my 2 Cents:
1. Wait for the sun comes up to 'boot up' the contrast;
2. CPL filter to get 'more detail' from the snow.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/x_tan/111867795​46/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/x_tan/916481931​0/

When shooting a snow scene I meter a grey card and ignore what the camera is trying to tell me what to do.

Without a grey card meter, I typically shoot 1-1.5 stops (OVER EXPOSE) when shooting a snow scene using the reflective meter in the camera. It renders the white snow whiter because your camera is trying to make it 18% grey.

^^ Both good suggestions; a regular ND wouldn't do you any good there, as all that does is darken the entire frame, which doesn't change the dynamic range of the image, and a Graduated ND would be extremely difficult to use given where the sky is in those shots.

Waiting until the entire scene is lit would help, as would making sure the sun is coming more from behind you than in front of you. In that situation you could expose for the snow, or the sky, and come away with something more like X-tan's examples above

^ Thanks. X Tan your pics look great as well, only with extreme saturation in PP was I able to get my sky that blue. Ended up looking very unnatural to me. Unlike your posts. My thought was that an ND filter would help to eliminate overblown highlights in the sky.
I thought under-exposing would also help that effect, when the opposite is true! I need to over-expose by a stop or 1.5 and then correct in PP
Thank you for those suggestions.

If you haven't read Understanding Exposure yet, you should give that a read; it will explain a lot of things about how you may need to over/underexpose for a given scene and why.

Your welcome
If your own eyes can't see any 'pop' / contrast for the landscape, the camera unlikely can do much better

Then we just need to rethink to take a very different kind of photo / landscape;

Telephotolens to compress the view / frame to avoid the sky can be a 'short cut':

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/x_tan/765898020​6/

Shoot black and white. Lots of contrast with lack of color always lends itself to b/w.

InfiniteDivide wrote in post #16603559
Same photo with heavy PP. Thoughts?

In my opinion, there is nothing that you could do to make that scene look good with the drab light that was on it. No camera settings, and no post processing magic, will make up for the fact that the light was so ordinary and drab. In this case, it is not really a matter of exposing properly, or adjusting any setting. Rather, it is a matter of spending time waiting for the light to be at its best. In fact, waiting for the light is 90% of landscape photography. Or maybe 99% would be more accurate.

Tom Reichner wrote in post #16603917
...In fact, waiting for the light is 90% of landscape photography. Or maybe 99% would be more accurate.

EXACTLY! This is the main reason I maybe a travel photography, and hardly a landscape photographer!!

x_tan wrote in post #16603995
EXACTLY! This is the main reason I maybe a travel photography, and hardly a landscape photographer!!

I agree as well, I am primarily a travel and street photographer by habit. I take mostly environmental photos and environmental portraits.
I am inspired each day by several different threads on here. I like to create a "story" by freezing a moment in time.
That is something very hard to do with a portrait-only (85L) or macro lens(100L), though I do enjoy macro photography in itself.
My attempts at landscape photography are more thinking "env. portraits minus the people."
Rather than breathtaking scenery that I plan for and coordinate optimal lighting it individually.

OP, your problem is with the light. Your shot was either in the shade or on an overcast day, but either way there was no contrast in the snow, making it appear a blank gray smudge. Sure, you can crank the dials up to 11 but it looks fake. Notice that x_tan's shots were all in bright sunlight with the sun at an angle. This gives you shadows and microcontrast, and that's what makes the snow look like snow (that and the fact that you can actually set the snow highlights to pure white). For snow, you generally want either bright sunlight to get x_tan's white and blue, contrasty landscapes (which look really good in B&W, I might add, and can make for extremely interesting near-abstract compositions) or the sun low on the horizon for softer tones yet significant shadows. Working with snow without directional light may be a little less intuitive and requires you to really embrace the fact that you'll end up with a lot of negative space - see Michael Kenna's work, for example.

Your camera settings have nothing at all to do with the RAW image that you cough out, they only represent what that camera would spit out should you be shooting in jpeg. I've written this often...

"I've been confused by that exposure compensation thing because the histogram was all over the place when imported into LR.
Since starting to shoot in manual mode, utilizing Live View's histogram, those problems are a thing of the past. Technique is:
That LV histogram is based on a jpeg rendition of your image so you need to "neutralize" (slide them to the left) all your "picture style" settings.
Set-up your LV to display a RGB histogram and blinkies whenever it's opened. Now it's a simple matter to adjust SS, F/stop, and ISO to
push" that histogram to just shy of the right side, a technique referred to as "Exposing To The Right".
Now simply input wanted/needed SS and f/stop and use the ISO to push that histogram to the right or...any combination of the three settings."

Having said all that...heed what Tom said

Naturalist wrote in post #16603404
When shooting a snow scene I meter a grey card and ignore what the camera is trying to tell me what to do.

Without a grey card meter, I typically shoot 1-1.5 stops (OVER EXPOSE) when shooting a snow scene using the reflective meter in the camera. It renders the white snow whiter because your camera is trying to make it 18% grey.

Here you go. Start with this. Keep it simple.