Snow at night

Skiing tracks, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I took some photos late at night today, trying to catch the snow landscape as long as it lasts. Tomorrow will be a warmer day, and some of the snow is going to melt. Already today we had slush on the streets.

I had only a mini-tripod with me when taking photos at night, but there was one benefit to moist snow: you could build a base to hold the camera where you wanted. It was dark enough that nobody probably saw me playing with snow, but if someone did watch it probably appeared quite strange.

I struggled a bit with the white balance settings, trying to define a custom white balance, but unfortunately there were so many different light sources that this proved impossible for me. Finally I ended up using AWB. With this scene it did a quite nice job.

Update: Panasonic just announced that they are releasing a firmware update v. 1.1 for the LX3, which - in addition to supporting a new flash unit - "improves auto white balance performance under different color temperatures and lighting". This will be available on December 15th.