G'day Steve,
Just popped in for a moment before I head out, thought I'd bump this up
I've never taken shots in the snow and I'm sure some more experienced members here will provide some good feedback... Might be worth trying a few test shots when you first start off and check for highlight blowout in your histogram. All the white snow might throw out the metering, so you may need to dial in some exposure compensation... Told ya I'd struggle
I don't think I'd use spot or centre-weighted metering, I think I'd stick to matrix but as I mentioned I've never taken snow shots... I'd also suggest a polariser if you have one, which may help with contrast etc... Oh, did a quick search and found this thread that may help too
http://www.dslrusers.net/viewtopic.php? ... light=snow
Re: the aperture question for landscape stuff... It may be common for lenses to be their absolute sharpest at their mid-range of apertures, some will fare better than others at the wide-open end (maybe the higher quality/more expensive ones?), but sometimes people will use a very small aperture (eg: F22) to slow the shutter down and increase exposure times... For example, some may use a very small aperture to obtain a longer shutter speed for that blurred water effect on waterfalls, or they may want a huge DOF having something really close in the foreground and still want distant things to be in focus and sharp...
Best advice is to have a ball!
Cheers.