Dead sky

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mark
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Help the shots I'm taking now of the trees the colours are really standing out but the sky is dead ie no colour it looks white I'm using a d300 iso 200 and settings on cloudy/shade really could use some help or advice here plz '
Mark
 
Because you will be getting such a large dynamic range from the colour in the leaf's to the sky you will be getting the sky blown, there will be not much you can do about this, apart from exposing for the sky after and the merging the PP to get some detail back. If your shooting in Raw, you may be able to recover some of it, but i suspect not as there will be such a difference. Its a very hard subject to get right. Another option would be to try a fill flash, and try to use a faster shutter speed, combo to bring the range down.
 
nope, a ND grad might though but if there sky isn't blue or it's plain grey there's not much you can do.
 
Two options

Use some Nd grad filters to lower the exposure of the sky.

Take 2 shots, one exposed for the sky, one for the foreground and blend them in software.


A polariser only works when the sky is blue. It darkens the blue and makes the clouds pop. If there is no colour in the sky with your naked eye, then nothing will solve that. Wait to shoot the picture on a different day.
 
If it's a blue autumn sky and it's only dead on the image because it's blown due to dynamic range.. then using a polariser might help (depending on the angle to the sun) in conjunction with a touch of negative exposure compensation.

If it's a grey overcast sky, then there's nothing much to capture in the first place. If you're setting the camera to cloudy/shady (why? auto WB is pretty good these days, auto WB and raw even better) that suggest you've already identified that there's not much going on with the sky.
 
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