Skies over exposed?

mrbez

mrbez

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Hi Guys,

I took a few pictures of some landscapes yesterday, however, when the 40D was showing that the image was correctly exposed, everything seemed to come out fine, except for the sky. It seemed to be burnt out.

So when I readjusted my shutter speed and aperture, I under exposed a little bit, the sky would be better, but the detail would be too dark.

How can I stop the sky from burning out whilst keeping the image correctly exposed?

Thanks.
 
What you need is a Cokin holder (or similar) and an ND grad filter. These are clear at one side and 1-4 stops of neutral density on the other to bring skies under control.

Personally I prefer hard grads, which have a hard transition between clear and ND, but there are also soft grads out there too, depending on the landscape you're shooting.
 
So you have the clear side at the bottom, gradually fading up?

Is this the only way?

Thanks.
 
There is the Cokin filters , i use these personally because its a brilliant way of correctly exposing the sky. In situations were you dont have a clear skyline you could try taking multiple exposures and merging them as a HDR.

Or

Take the shot correctly exposed, then take a second shot a few stops down so the sky is correctly exposed then merge them as layers in photoshop or any other image editing program. then blend each image.
 
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The only other way is like Aden says, take 2 images, then merge them in post.

Digital cameras simply don't have the dynamic range to adequately expose the sky and the ground without ND grads or shooting RAW with some post-processing tweakage.
 
A ND grad is a filter thats graduated from clear to dark and you can vary where you want the transition by sliding it up and down in a filter holder

A polarised light blocks light coming in from different directions, and can be used to cut reflections and gives greens and blue skies a boost.

A landscape photographer will have both, and will use them both, including together.
 
What i also suggest doing is if your looking at using a polariser, get the Cokin mount polariser and not lens specific ones. So you dont end up buying polarisers for multiple lenses then you can just buy different Cokin adaptor rings for £4-10.
 
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