I don't think it has Frame Mode, how do you feel this would help with slomo?

Looking around the net it seems that generally the HC96 is not considered to be very good at action stuff, no idea why, statements of lack of sharp images, but it might be worth looking into.

Exposures in snow are a real pain, especially at midday if it's sunny. I've done a little bit, but not much, and I kind of found out after what was going wrong. Often a neutral density filter is needed, sometimes a polariser can act in this capacity whilst doing it's job dealing with surface reflections and giving the consequential saturation of skies etc.

The 'Beach' setting is probably the one to go for, this is intended to deal with over bright landscape etc, so makes sense. But I think I'd prefer using the spot metering fucntion my Sony's have too, where you touch the screen for the area you want metered. Use a grey card and you can set the camera out of auto settings, which may produce more consistence exposures than the auto functions.

Also remember white balance, this is best set before each shooting session, use a white balance lens cap or white card for this, assuming you have control of that on the camera.