Beginner Washed out skies?

thatone1967

thatone1967

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Jim
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I shot mostly aviation, and am really struggling with "washed out" skies.
I was at RIAT back in the summer, and the skies were very grey, but seeing other pictures taken by other photographers on the day, they had no such problems.
Not sure if they resolved the issue in post processing, or whether I have my camera set up wrong.
Camera is an EOS450D, with a 75-300 Canon MkII.
Shots are in RAW, I tend to use full auto unless I am trying to get prop blur.

See example below: (which was at Farnborough not RIAT)

IMG_6258 by Jim Pritchard, on Flickr
 
Grey skies are grey skies I'm afraid and make aviation photography very difficult.

You can do quite a lot in PP but I tend to find the effort not necessarily worth going to extreme lengths like putting a plane on a different background (or to put it another way, my skills aren't sufficient to do it).

With a more modern camera you will be able to push the shadows and pull the highlights quite a bit to get the plane to be better exposed overall, it will probably work with your camera too but there will be more latitude with a modern camera.

For example, for the shot above I would really boost the shadows so the underside of the vulcan was more clearly visible. Actually, I probably would have exposed the shot differently so, with the older camera, I wouldn't have to boost the shadows quite so much.

And this leads to the final, but most important point. There is a lot you can do just by shooting at the right time, from the right place, against the right angle and plane position. And sometimes you just have to accept that the results won't be ideal.

I am by no means an expert (having been to a grand total of two airshows, both Bournemouth) but on what was a totally crappy day I got these, which are a mixture of playing around in PP and shooting at the right time.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/72341657@N02/albums/72157657938901406
 
I don't know how much PP you've done to the shot you posted but it looks typical of a straight out of the camera raw file.
It looks as though there's plenty of detail in the underside of the plane while there's also some definition in the sky.
I'd love to have a go with it If you'd be happy to send a copy of the raw file. (Dropbox maybe.)
 
Last edited:
Graham W said:
I don't know how much PP you've done to the shot you posted but it looks typical of a straight out of the camera raw file.
It looks as though there's plenty of detail in the underside of the plane while there's also some definition in the sky.
I'd love to have a go with it If you'd be happy to send a copy of the raw file. (Dropbox maybe.)
Click to expand...
thanks Graham, can you drop me your details to jim.pritchard @ gmail . com

Cheers
 
13783-1448532880-761c6e201d6dbe47fc2ffdc1f36d9096.jpg


Using the posted low res image.

Open in PS, copy layer, select sky using magic wand, invert, slight feather, edit-copy-paste, name layer plane.

On background copy layer. Image-adjustments-levels, adjust levels.

On plane layer. Image-adjustments-curves, adjust curves.

New layer, fill with 50% grey, set blend to soft light, with the foreground colour set to black, a soft round brush at very low values - burn in the exhaust.

flatten image.

Done.

Rhodese.
 
Rhodese said:
13783-1448532880-761c6e201d6dbe47fc2ffdc1f36d9096.jpg


Using the posted low res image.

Open in PS, copy layer, select sky using magic wand, invert, slight feather, edit-copy-paste, name layer plane.

On background copy layer. Image-adjustments-levels, adjust levels.

On plane layer. Image-adjustments-curves, adjust curves.

New layer, fill with 50% grey, set blend to soft light, with the foreground colour set to black, a soft round brush at very low values - burn in the exhaust.

flatten image.

Done.

Rhodese.
Click to expand...

And like magic!

Good improvement :)
 
No offence, but really? Look at the plane!! Its' destroyed it. The quality is terrible, it's obviously processed to death and it's nowhere near as good as the original. Sorry.

PP is not the answer here. The sky was not washed out at all. A grey sky is a grey sky.
 
:(:(......................:rolleyes::).

Rhodese.
 
Sorry.
 
In lr cc the de-haze slider can bring some detail back into the sky as long as you don't over do it. Just a thought.
 
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