Verified answer

You have to add about 2 stops exposure. All in camera meters are reflectance and try to render a scene at 18% grey. If left to it's own, the resulting exposure in the snow will be underexposed. You have to increase exposure to bring it up where it needs to be. Alternatively, you can use the camera to meter off a grey card in the scene and this will give you a correct reading.

A hand held, ambient light meter would be the best of all as it measures light falling ON the subject.

steve

Your camera will tell you how to expose the subject (polar bear) to make it 18% gray. This is because every reflected light meter assumes that everything in the world reflects 18% of the light that hits it. Overall, not a bad assumption, but not so useful for subjects that are either black or white.

Unfortunately, your polar bear will reflect over 90% of the light that hits it. That means that your camera will try to underexpose it by about 2 f-stops.

Your solution is to OVER expose it by 2 f-stops more than your camera's light meter suggests.

And if you're shooting a black bear, your camera will want to over expose him by the same two f-stops to make him appear 18% gray too. Under expose by two f-stops and you'll have your properly exposed black bear.

From a distance...a really long distance.

Forget color unless its eating,

Dampen down the aperture..